I was reviewing a website today that was a flash only website and needed to know if the company that built the site was smart enough to include a HTML version of the site for search engine indexing. The short answer…no.
At SMT we do use Flash, but only as elements within a website. As any seasoned SEO expert will tell you, search engines have a hard time indexing sites that are totally developed in Flash. This is not to say that Flash sites can not get indexed, but when is the last time you saw a Flash only website at the number one spot?
So my quest to find out how I can optimize Flash only websites for the search engines has lead me to the topic of Search Optimized Flash Architecture (SOFA). SOFA is a technique of converting the Flash content into XHTML. Once the content is converted to XHTML it can now be indexed by search engines.
I also came across another technique using the JavaScript function called SWFObject(). The primary content of the site is placed with a DIV on the HTML page. The function determines if the browser is capable of viweing Flash. If it does not, then it will render the content from the DIV on the page.
Some may proclaim that this is cloaking, but as long as you are serving up the same content that is in your Flash you will not have anything to worry about.
A third option is to use the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK. This program extracts links and text from a Flash SWF file and returns the data as a HTML document. Learn more about the Flash Search Engine SDK.
Tags: flash only website high ranking, seo for flash only website, optimize flash website, flash for search engine, search optimized flash architecture, sofa, flash