Does Flash Affect SEO?
It's Like Getting all Dressed up and Nowhere to Go
When you build your website you want it to be as attractive as possible. Your web designer, or yourself, may think that adding Flash will give it that extra punch that will bring admirers and traffic in droves to your site. While adding some Flash can make a web page more appealing; too much of it can be a bad thing.
Search Engines Love Text
All the search engines crawl around scavenging for keywords, headings and relevant content. If your website is built entirely in Flash you face some enormous obstacles. Your search engine optimization will be a nightmare. Your text must also be available in the html code to benefit from any SEO.
Relevant content in a website is one of the most vital criteria for SEO. Search engines primarily read HTML text. They review this content and look for flowing content with keywords and headings. Text displayed in graphic form, including Flash, can only have a damaging effect on SEO end results.
Flash, Keywords, and Search Engines: an unlikely Match
From an SEO perspective, if your site is entirely Flash, you only have one potential entry page, that being your main URL. Not only will search engines not notice your home page but all your other site pages, that could have organic ranking with search engines, are missed out when a search engine crawls your site. All your keyword research is most likely for naught.
While it is possible to create a website with Flash that meets the search engine optimization requirements, the process is tedious, complicated, long, and expensive. Even with that said, the site may never achieve its full capability for SEO. The challenges are many and in the long run, it is probably not worth it.
Flash can Work in Moderation
Don’t get me wrong, a site with Flash can be very visually appealing, but if you don’t get the traffic you would like you can more than likely blame the Flash.
So, what is Flash good for? A well rounded site with html and banners or ads in Flash will provide the necessary information for search engine crawlers and some nice aesthetic features. Content based SEO is the most solid of internet marketing plans. Whatever you do include some great content, with flowing keywords and headings so you will be recognized.