Search Engine Optimization for Flash

Chapter 3. Creating Optimized Content in Flash

Now that you have some experience creating optimized HTML content, take a look at some techniques to make your Flash content more visible to search engines. This chapter discusses search engine optimization (SEO) mainly from the Flash development perspective, focusing on what you need to do for optimization when creating Flash applications.

Flash SEO Myths

Although they may be legitimate, most of the reasons people don’t like Flash are based on outdated myths regarding the technology’s SEO capabilities. In this section, we’ll look at some of the most prominent myths that create haters out of otherwise normal human folk.

Myth 1: Flash Content Is Bad for SEO

The first myth is that Flash and SEO don’t mix. In other words, some people believe that to have an SEO site, you must eliminate most, if not all, Flash content. This is simply not true. Flash content, when used effectively, can work great with SEO. Other media elements, such as images, audio, and video (including video in Flash Player), are searchable based on the HTML content that surrounds them.

Myth 2: Flash Content Isn’t Searchable

Another myth about Flash content is that search engines can’t search through it to index the information within SWF files. For a long time, this myth was true. Though static text and links in SWF files could be indexed, this was only because Flash added that information to the HTML containing the SWF upon publishing.

Recently, Adobe announced that the Google ...