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July 30, 2007
Using Flash on your website
Without a doubt Flash can enhance the overall look of a website. However, there is a thin line in the level of Flash usage that when crossed can negatively affect your website's results with the search engines.

Flash is basically a visual medium that internet spiders are not able to read. While it may look very attractive to viewers search engines may not index the website at all in the case of some Flash-heavy website. With the exception of the Googlebot, which is able to read and extract text and links from Flash, most internet spiders are set to simply ignore the entire file. Even when Flash is used just for the banner of the website (in all pages) you may be compromising one of the best areas for search engine optimization. The best practice is to have websites that are fully search engine friendly and to ask your web designer to achieve the niceness of Flash with other graphic approaches that can use the ATL text property as well as the optimized file name structure. If your website has to use Flash then use it for rich media and make sure that HTML is the base for content and navigation. Another alternative is to use text based footer navigation or content to resemble a non-Flash version of the website.

If you are developing a website that contains Flash files run it through analyzers and simulators to determine the outcome for search engines. As a rule of thumb make sure that internet spiders can see the same content and information as viewers of the website.