Switching to Flash, will that hurt my rankings

by cmo140
16 replies
  • SEO
  • |
If I switch my website over to a flash, will that hurt my rankings in the serps?
#flash #hurt #rankings #switching
  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    yes. probably. You can use meta tags and things, but
    SE's cannot read flash content or know what it's about.
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    YES..

    Flash is not indexable by Google... They index HTML pages, and text, not flash.

    Caleb
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    Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    Flash can be super-cool. Check out this site, which loads very
    fast and makes a powerful point about the business:

    Branding Company Corporate Branding Internet Brand Identity Marketing Company

    Try view source on that flash page and you'll see how it's optimized -
    it's well done all around.
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    • Profile picture of the author GameVoid
      Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye View Post


      Try view source on that flash page and you'll see how it's optimized -
      it's well done all around.
      They took a bunch of text that WOULD be indexed by google and hid it from the viewer on the page. That gives them the advantage of both flash for User Experience and text for SEO.

      I had heard though that google doesn't like text hidden that way, but that could just be another one of those Google myths.
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  • Profile picture of the author BillLudwig
    Google does indeed index flash websites and with work they can rank quite well. Getting ranked with a flash website is much more difficult though and takes extra work. That said there are dozens of reasons why making a flash website is a bad idea but getting indexed in Google isn't one of them.
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  • Profile picture of the author cmo140
    I built my site and its pretty nice, but I see there are alot of templates out there that are pretty cheap and blow my away. What would you suggest of type to upgrade to. Of Course I want to keep my indexed pages.
    Styles are jquery, html and css, what do you suggest and do you know any good template sites, looking at the most to spend about 100. I also have a prestashop install on the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    If the site takes a long time to load because of the Flash, that's
    a problem for SEO.

    Whether Google penalized sites for having flash elements with
    hidden text I don't know. I think Metatags for flash sites are
    probably a good idea, but stuffing hidden content behind the
    flash or whatever might be bad.
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  • Profile picture of the author Justin Jordan
    Originally Posted by cmo140 View Post

    If I switch my website over to a flash, will that hurt my rankings in the serps?
    Beyond that, bear in mind a certain number of people will be turned off by flash. There are, for instance, a lot of flashblick add ons for browser, and if I click on a site that is just flash, I am likely to click elsewhere.

    So you should probably ask yourself whether you actually need flash, and whether it will help or hurt your site. These days, quite a lot of people prefer to just get to whatever without a bunch of fancy crap getting in the way and slowing down their computers.
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  • Profile picture of the author cmo140
    I am looking at template, that only the headers are flash not the rest, will that hurt me?
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  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    If your site is developed so that you drive the majority of your traffic from SE's then I wouldn't touch Flash with a barge pole. If you HAVE to use it then there is no harm in adding some elements of Flash within the site, just don't completely convert it over. Chances are and from my experience, it WILL hurt your rankings!
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    Thanks
    Zaheer

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  • Profile picture of the author cmo140
    how will a flash header hurt my ranking. I will have the same content with tags and everything. I get my traffic from backlinking anyway. I am ranked for words that are not even on my site.
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  • Profile picture of the author cbpayne
    Originally Posted by cmo140 View Post

    If I switch my website over to a flash, will that hurt my rankings in the serps?
    I hope it does. Flash sucks and I do not want flash sites in my search results.
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  • Profile picture of the author hearme
    Well flash is not a good option if you want better ranking in search engine but their are some ways you can do the on page optimization . Do google it.
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  • Profile picture of the author cmo140
    I am already ranked because of my backlinking not my content, also how would one flash header change my ranking.
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