Flash and SEO

Flash and SEO do not mix. One piece of advice we have to anyone looking at getting their website designed is to avoid Flash as much as possible.
As common as Adobe Flash is, it is not a web standard. We predict it will be phased it within a couple of years with the onset of the new HTML 5 standard.

Why should you avoid using Flash with SEO?
If you care about SEO and how your web page will rank in Google then you’ll want to avoid Flash heavy sites. Why? Because currently, search engines like Google can not read any text contained within a Flash script. Google has made advances in their ability to index certain Flash content, and it is likely within a year or so Google will have the technology and resources to be able to understand and read animated text, human speech or any other content contained within Flash websites and files, but it is likely never to fully support it, or favour it for SEO purposes.
If you’re whole site or sections are contained within a Flash script, including the main menu, text content, banner headers etc, all Google will see is a blank page. This is terrible for optimisation. Google will have no basis to rank your site for any particular keywords, or at least severely limit it.

Not only is it bad for SEO, any Flash on a website viewed with an iPhone or iPad will not be visible. With these products growing market share, you may be seriously limited your websites visibility, and hurting your bottom line.

Some website designers, in particular graphic designers, love to use Flash in their websites designs. It looks pretty, but little do they know you can do just about everything Flash does without using Flash, and make it user friendly and SEO friendly!

Whilst it is possible to apply SEO to a website built with Flash, you are restricting the potential. Without an aggressive link building campaign Google will rank a website with visible relevant text above a site that relies on Flash. Avoid Flash and SEO.