How to set up a Flash site that Google can index?

Question

I'm about five years behind in my knowledge of what's current in website design and function, but I'm about to take a stab at putting together a site from scratch using probably Dreamweaver, and because I'm stuck in about 2002 programming-wise, I've heard various things about problems that Google has in indexing content on flash sites. Is this the case, and if so, how do I get around it? I haven't yet downloaded a trial version of Dreamweaver, but I've had people recommend it. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Chad, You will be miles and miles ahead if you don't build a flash site. If you want flash, imbed some on a page, but truthfully you can use advanced CSS and XHTML which will spider correctly and have a site look just as "jazzy" as you can with flash.

Check out the following with some real tips for CSS use.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/ (check out all the site for alot of info

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/ some really great stuff and all CSS
you also need to see this one

http://home.tiscali.nl/developerscorner/port-hole/porthole.htm
you should take a look at his home page of even more menus and page tricks.

There are tons of CSS helps out there. The porthole deal lets you see that movement is easy with CSS and can be quite easy to do.

Not that I am against flash, just I think its use needs to be limited to certain things on certain pages and not used for an entire site (which makes you spidering question non-important.)

Answer 2

Chad,

I own a web marketing company in Charleston, SC. And I have written articles there about the use of Flash in Web Site marketing.

The short answer is "Don't use Flash." The long answer is below.

Think of flash like this. Lets say I show you, a human, a picture of me and Brad Pitt. I then asked you to tell me which one was Brad. You would know pretty quickly. (that is why I do web marketing and not acting)

However, if I put a picture of me and Brad into my computer and title it brad-and-me.jpg, the computer has no idea that Brad is in the picture, let alone how to determine if it is actually him.

Further, unless I name the file, "picture-of-Brad-Pitt.jpg" the computers over at the Search Engines would not know. Heck, I could take a picture of a tree and name it that and the search engines may index that tree as him.

What does that have to do with Flash? Well, Flash is a video or moving pictures. Those pictures move around the screen and do some really cool things. I always get a little jealous when I see a Flash site because they are usually so pretty. The problem is that the computers cannot actually determine anything on there because even the words you typed into your site get converted into pictures of words. Flash is invisible to search engines.

Now to your question, "how do I get around it?"

You can use Flash elements to build your site. These elements can enhance the look/feel of your site without harming your results. Consider the Charleston wedding planner website I just built. I use Flash slide shows on some of their pages, but the rest of the page is in html and full indexed with Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Another work-around is to build a parallel site. Build an html home page where users can choose which site they see. Be sure that there is an html link to your html version to that robots/spiders can follow that path and read your site. This method is double the work.

A third method/suggestion would be to build your site in html first and get it indexed and ranked in the search engines. Later, after you have tons of traffic, add your flash based version to enhance your visitors' experience. Be sure to leave your html version there though.

As far as your question about Dreamweaver goes, I would explore some other programs too. I have DW and use it for a few small things, but mainly I use XSitePro to build my sites. It is cheaper, has a faster learning curve, and has an SEO checker built in to help you learn what the SEs are looking for. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

In the official Google Webmaster blog, they discussed how Google sees flash and offered tips on what website owners can do to make their flash sites indexable by Google.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html

It is always best to go to the source, so read the Google blog for their response

Answer 4

Google adwords is the one approach to get your internet site showing on the most sensible of Google rapidly. Indexing will take extra time and you are going to have to spend a while in optimizing your sight to maximise your Google directory.