TexasDesign.com

Creating a site using Flash is great for making web sites interesting, informative, and fun to explore. But you may be hesitant to use Flash out of the concern that the Google, MSN, Yahoo! will not be able to find your site­ after all, what good is a well crafted web site if nobody can find it?

Be assured that you can use Flash in your site and still get good search results. Take a look at these simple tips to help you achieve search engine visibility. The header on this page is made up of a flash animation that cycles through the different sections of the web site, this simple “banner” adds a design element as well as functionality to the site. If you use Firefox or IE 6.x, go grab the Yellowpipe RightLynx plug-in, with this you can see your site as search engine’s see the site- this is an excellent tool to help you think how to design the site for both humans and search engines.

If you have to use Flash as the dominate visual for the site, be sure to maximize the sites “friendliness” by writing your “title” tags properly, search engines rely heavily on these tags and doing the correctly will help your SEF. The tile tag is the copy that appears in the top bar of the browser. The title tag should consist of keywords that are pertinent to the page and the title of the web site. For instance this page would have the title tag:

When creating a flash site you would probably include the navigation in the flash itself. Always include HTML-links across the bottom (below the fold) so that if the spiders can’t read the flash (some do, most don’t) you still have a way for the spider to crawl through the site.

Long gone are the days where setting up a site and using flash meant that you can’t be picked by the search engines. Follow these quick tips and you will be successful. Also Adobe (Macromedia) has a great artcle of this subject at: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/flash_searchability.html