Is Flash Out of the Scope of SEO?

Most SEO professionals and internet marketers are concerned about optimizing flash content on a website. We know that search engine crawlers are familiar with static pages off which they read the content and get hold of the keywords. But a flash based website is not static to its true sense. The content is not readable till the swf file actually starts to run – and the video starts to play. So does that mean we should forget about optimizing flash websites? Is flash really out of the scope of SEO?

Image Source: www.seo.com

SEOed Flash Content

The answer to the question asked in the last section is “Yes, flash content can definitely be optimized”. And really, it is no big deal either! There are two very simple ways to go for this. We can either use a JavaScript function, SWFObject(), or we can implement the meta data option for flash (that is supported by Flash CS4). Let us look at these options one by one.

JavaScript Function to SEO Flash

This is very simple. Instead of creating the web page fully based on flash, create an html page and add a DIV in the code to house the Flash snippet. Add your content in a textual way in the html tags (like you do for images and other media). You will have to use the JavaScript function SWFObject() to make this work in the best possible way. What this function does is check whether or not the browser is capable of playing Flash – and if it is – it lets the movie play after going through the textual content.

Using Flash CS4

The other option is featured only on Flash CS4 – at least till date. Here you can actually add all the meta data information to your flash file, and therefore enhance the content to be perfectly optimized for the search engines. Go to File -> File Info in CS4 and select the Meta Data Information option. Add your content and get your flash file optimized! This is as simple as that.

So choose between the two options mentioned above – although we are not yet very sure on how effective the CS4 version is as of now. But there is a lot to come with regards to action script and SWF files and search engine optimization with internet marketing taking a completely different level today. It is just a matter of time when optimizing flash will be as simple as adding the relevant keywords to a content.