Search engines like Google have gotten a lot better at reading Flash files than they were in the past. In fact, the content of a site written primarily in Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash used to be invisible to a search engine. Although Google is much better at reading and indexing Flash content, most people in the SEO world will still recommend having an HTML-style navigation and content template.

Many customers come to us with Flash site designs, which they like because Flash allows for animation, interesting transitions, and a better look and feel. People like graphic designers and wedding photographers commonly have Flash sites, but quickly learn that they aren’t getting good search engine placement, even in non-competitive areas. As stated above, the SWF (ShockWave Flash) file format is more readable to search engines than ever, but the downside is that the file, not the page containing the file, may be listed on the search engine as the content source.

Luckily, there are ways to keep the look-and-feel of Flash while getting your site indexed. Here are a few tips for having Flash functionality and search engine rankings.

• Visit Adobe’s SEO Page for Flash. Adobe is always adding functionality, and works with search engines to make it easier for files to be read.
• Add HTML content below Flash Pages. This can sometimes be anathema to visual people like photographers and graphic designers, since the content is usually visible in a paragraph below the fold of the page. However, if a site can’t be found on Google, potential customers (and critics) won’t be able to see the attractive visual elements above the content.
• Use Flash elements, instead of using Flash for primary site navigation. Also, it is usually better to have several individual files (one for each page) than a single file that resides on only one HTML Page.
• If you have to, create a set of HTML pages that contain good SEO content, and use calls to action that direct people to the Flash version.
• Have alternative text (which offers some SEO value) that offers up a description of the site content, in case your reader does not have Flash enabled.
• For Flash files that show text, avoid embedding the text into images. A search engine can read text in Flash, but a picture of text will not be indexed.

One of the things to keep in mind when designing Flash sites is that search engines prefer to find a hierarchy of pages, and then want to understand the relationship between those pages. This is easy to do with the classic HTML model, since there is usually a Homepage>Category>Subcategory model at work. Flash pages may avoid this level of functionality, and even trigger transitions between pages, which can confuse a search spider looking for direct relationships.

As time goes on, search engines are becoming better at emulating user behavior and understanding the content of all kinds of interactive media. Even so, it should be incumbent on the designer to make sure this media is properly labeled and searchable so engines like Google and Bing can classify it in relation to every other piece of information on the Internet.