Does Flash Negatively Impact SEO Yes and No

A big misconception I hear about flash is its negative connotation regarding SEO. And flash gets a bad rap because of it. Many people have asked me about flash and have heard the rumors and concerns about how it can hurt your site when it comes to SEO. The short answer is yes it can. But that does not mean you need to shy away from flash entirely. This article will clear up all of the misconceptions regarding flash and SEO.

Text

Search engines are not able to crawl text which is embedded in a flash-object, they are only able to crawl static HTML text on a webpage. There is probably a way to get around this, but it is certainly not worth the hassle. And since the on-page text is the most important part of your site to the search engines, this should be the first place your optimization efforts should be focused.

Your target keyword should be the first phrase in your title and description tag. Your page title is the document title that appears at the top of the page and is used by most search engines as the link to your webpage from the SERPs. This is a great place to stick the keyword for that page. Whenever possible include the keyword in the page title, and it certainly should be the first phrase in the description as well.

Now as you can see above the main phrases are used in the META tags. Now the META tags are not the only place to stick text. You have the option of placing your keywords in your article or blog description as well. Do not overdo it or the search engines will think you are spamming them. Just write useful content to your reader, and if you can slip in a couple of keyword phrases just to get the point across, that is okay.

Now as you can see above there is a couple of uses of flash, and that is just one of the many places you can use flash to enhance your site. A lot of SEO experts will tell you that a flash site is less likely to get high SEO placement than a non-flash site. They think that non-flash sites are less likely to be crawled by search engines than flash sites. I do not know of any data that has been published stating this for sure, but just in case I would recommend any Flash expert make use of it in moderation.

In The Keywords Meta Tag

Even if you decide that placing your keywords in the meta keywords tag is redundant it is still worth adding it. There is some debate as to whether or not this tag is necessary, but what I do know is that it won´t do you any harm to place it. Place your main keywords and keyword phrases in here, but don´t stuff them in. Try to be descriptive and brief. This can help to assure that the visitor knows exactly what they are going to find on the page.

The URL

If your URL begins with your keyword phrase it is searched for by the search engines more readily, so carefully choose. If you use dashes you have to be careful of hyphens. If you use underscores you should use hyphens in the spaces between. That places more emphasis on your keywords. That also means that there is less and less need to use the dashes and hyphens anyway.

Heading Tags

The heading tags Main Headings and Sub Headings are looked at favorably by the search engines. Use your keywords in these. H1 is seen as the most important. You can use more than one H1 tag, each separated by a comma. For subheadings use H2, and so on. Use the H2 tag for your most important subheading.

Keywords In Your Content

You want to closely optimize your content for the search engines. Use your keywords about 2-4% of the time. Use the keyword phrase early in the copy of the page and then as often as you can throughout the page. Once you have your keyword phrase at a 2% usage rate, then increase it every other paragraph.

Use bold and italics sparingly, and don’t overuse them. Try not to use any font type beyond the biggest, especially the big, as that will make it look cramped and will books. For best results, use it only once on the page, and if that ever happens, you’ve got ample time to move it before the search engines come around to kick it out.

Finally, like all of your sites, whenever you create a new page for your site, attempt to place your keywords in the title of the page, and if possible at the very top of the page.