Search Engine Positioning for Flash Sites

52ltd · 03-24-2007, 03:56 PM

A new client of ours has come to us with a flash website they just recently purchased and probably spent way too much money on. Only afterwards to realize the website is beautiful but not search engine friendly. The homepage has almost zero content except the copyright info on the bottom, the swf file and the meta.

The domain name is 7 years old and has a little bit of link popularity with only 2 back links showing in Google.

Do you think its possible to position a flash website using IBL's to leverage it in the SE's?

A flash website with almost zero content, and only 1 html page - the homepage?

Seo Madrid · 03-25-2007, 03:34 AM

It´s going to be tough, that´s for sure. You´d need a very powerful keyword targeted link building to overcome the factors that you´re missing. I´d advice then to do a mirror version of the site in a more SEO friendly technology, and link it from the home. That way, apart of having a chance on the SERPs, you´ll give the many users that don´t like flash, a chance to like your client´s site.

markov · 03-25-2007, 12:25 PM

Do search engines like flash sites? I think they are considered to be non-seo friendly.

charlesgan · 03-25-2007, 06:37 PM

no no... the flash site still can be seo. and listed in search engine.
mainly what you can do, is create few links to content page. you can left the mainpage with flash 99%... add few footer links to your other directory/files... and SE will still see your site as usual.

backlink it as usual, and your site will get listed as normal.

charlesgan · 03-25-2007, 06:38 PM

i seen before search engine crawl the content within SWF, the text is crawl out...

... i forgot where i seen it, but it exist.

cessai · 03-26-2007, 09:39 AM

as far as i know, SE's do not give enough favor with flash sites. but you can still optimize it. but i guess it needs more careful analysis, tons of link building strategies.. and more patience, i believe so

tnk · 03-26-2007, 04:06 PM

Are u serious? charlesgan

52ltd · 03-26-2007, 06:42 PM

Yeah Im pretty sure you can do it. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. Regardless of what anyone says I think it CAN be done. I'm already pushing new links to the URL so I've started the process.

In theory all I'm doing is developing link popularity for a certain domain name. Im pushing a domain name. Not the content. I'm pushing a domain name and telling all SE's this is what my site is related to by using proper anchor text as I acquire new IBL's. Soon this domain name will be associated with a few keywords. I'm kind of thinking it can be done w/out even having the words in the page.

Similiar to Bush's bio coming up #1 for failure. I believe the same rule applies here with our flash site. We'll see....

WebGeek182 · 03-26-2007, 07:14 PM

Inbound links are the most important element in SEO these days.

That is going to be key for your flash site as content optimization will be almost impossible without, like some of the others said, building either a mirror in html or at the least some new pages.

You can optimize a flash site if done from the beginning. It is a problem that there is only one page, as it doesn't look too good to search engines that it's only a one-page site. There is some truth that having more pages helps (to an extent), as long as they are quality pages. For one, there's more pages for others to link to. To have a well optimized Flash site, you need to have unique URL's and not have all the content load on one page. You may need to think of some ways to modify the current flash to load in separate pages. Normally I recommend that Flash sites are created using a mix of Flash elements and html. That way there is still some readable content.

adamx8 · 03-26-2007, 07:39 PM

I stay away from building a site in flash and plain html many times becuase of the content and link value of the site. Flash sites are hard to add fresh content all the time without having to re-engineer it. HTML stays stagnent unless you redo the page which I have found more work than anything else. I can see the point about have side or bottom information around the .swf, but really the content you have is what will make other people want to link to you. I guess as long as your client has great content built in they will be fine, but I personally like a CMS that dynamically changes and easily updated. That is the biggest success I have had to this point. See if you client would like to make another purchase to do something better in the beginning for better results in the end. IMHO flash sucks to make a site out of, some have luck...but most just look pretty and don't make it far.

Sideways · 03-28-2007, 11:38 AM

I've seen flash sites get ranked before. You can do it 52...

coolguy27 · 03-29-2007, 05:36 AM

I think you should gather many related links as you can and make an html of that flash site of yours and optimize it...

Some Info: "Flash is often used on home pages as a "splash" page. The problem with these splash pages is that many times they are made entirely from Flash, which the search engines can't index. That means your splash page will not get listed. Your best bet search engine wise is to avoid submitting any page that is made mostly of Flash. If you must submit a page that is mostly Flash you can improve your chances of getting listed by to adding as much page copy to the page that you can. You should also make sure you have good meta tags and title tag."