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Can flash sites be "optimized"?

by Jaxxxon
14 replies
This past weekend, I spent an enormous amount of time at wix.com after discovering how easy it is to create websites there.

Unfortunately, I've also learned, and am still learning, a lot about off page SEO, but am just now seeing here and there that the onpage game is different (or rather, non existent) if trying to use SEO on-page tactics to rank a flash site...
Can someone please clarify a bit?
#flash #optimized #sites
  • Profile picture of the author peter25k
    Ranking flash files can be quite challenging since you cannot really build external links to flash pages because the url is not different for different pages. Also, google cannot really understand lot of content embedded in flash files but you can read more about this and what's google doing to improve flash indexing here: h t t p :// g oogle webmas tercentral.blogspot.com/20 08/06/impro ved-flash-indexing.html (sorry about this link it's just I'm new member here and I'm not allowed to post link in replies unless I have 15 posts. )

    There is another suggestion I can give you here. Check out and try to analyse website for new movies or games and see what they are doing because these sites can and are ranking high for movie title and game name type queries.

    I hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author johancades
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      • Profile picture of the author Pointer
        In general, FLASH sites do severely limit your ability to do SEO because search engines can't index the text within them. I'm not familiar with the capabilities of WIX, but you should be able to optimize the Title and Meta tags for a Flash site which is at least something.

        The best way to use FLASH and still get some SEO benefits is to use it along with separate HTML pages. You can embed parts of your page layout that are done in FLASH into HTML pages. So you can do something like create an animated FLASH header and menu, while leaving the rest of the page standard HTML. This will allow the search engines to still index the page text, because that part is HTML.

        This is really the best approach to using FLASH in my opinion because you can leverage FLASH's animation capabilities without severely limiting the SEO ability on the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author redlegrich
    You can in fact do most of the onpage stuff like meta descriptions. It's just there appears to search robots to be no content, which is hardly helpful. I think the question is what does the flash do for you. Clearly there are some things animation helps. But for the most part it's just a show off exercise by the designer. I'd recommend against using these sites that develop sites for you. Learn to do it yourself with WordPress if you are looking to achieve ranking success. As a previous poster said you can still have flash elements to create the visual effect, but these total flash pages sites are not that effective.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Flash will be dead in a few years... if you want something like that, then just learn j query or flex.
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    • Profile picture of the author JordanBanks
      Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

      Flash will be dead in a few years... if you want something like that, then just learn j query or flex.
      Boy, I could almost feel the "slap"! :rolleyes:
      What makes you so sure?
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  • Profile picture of the author ganesh
    Flash is definitely losing ground as a web site design tool. I am not sure if it will completely die down one day or not. I have used flash in the past but only for intros or certain parts of the site. There are other options available today to make your site flashy and at the same time search engine friendly.
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  • Profile picture of the author nick123
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    • Profile picture of the author bluechillisa
      For a Flash site I would recommend only using some flash aspects in your actual content but build your site in a CMS or HTML format. That way your different pages can be indexed correctly and backlinks dont have a problem routing back to your page.
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  • Profile picture of the author paintbrush4u
    I agree with a couple of warriors on this post...

    Flash's days are numbered.....

    My understnanding was that you use flash to Jazz up your online presence... but it wasn't very SEO friendly site...

    Your SEO activities for a full flash site are very limited..... there are some pundits who would like to argue with that... and I will let them...

    The best way to use flash in the past was to use the integration approach.....have a flash part added to your site/page but also have regular plain old text site too... where by you can now try to influence the SE's to look at your favorable.

    SE spiders are not smart enouff to read flash, just like they are now smart enough to read even pictures or videos for that matter. All they do is they read the meta tags for these elements and take your word for it....

    So if you have a picture of lets say George Bush and name the picture and its properties as Obama....guess what.....

    Anyways you get the point......i hope
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    Geo-Targeting and local SEO Consultant
    Yes I do believe in Money Tree - Its just that we call it our LISTs

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  • Profile picture of the author kiranraj19
    Collect more & more backlinks for flash website
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  • Profile picture of the author TriWin
    I don't know that flash will never make a comeback but HTML5 is the new it coding for the web2.0 crowd. If you want to include flash use flash elements on your page but build it basic php or html so you can SEO it.
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    • Profile picture of the author csm111
      Flash website is not being easily for seo person because of Google or any other search engine crawler do not read properly that is why Flash website is not being easy for optimization
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  • Profile picture of the author Pointer
    Thankfully HTML 5 and Javascript frameworks like Jquery enable many interactive features that in the past required FLASH. This along with the lack of support on Apple devices is quite a blow to the future of FLASH for anything other than the development of online games, cartoons, animation, and online video.
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