Smart e-Commerce: e Business Information

Everyone loves Adobe Flash, especially the web development community and especially those who use Adobe's Dreamweaver software. Even Google admitted that it can index Flash (See the Google post, here). But here's the rub. The ABILITY to index content does not mean the PRIORITY of that content in SEO-based results on Google organic / natural / free results. So, yes, Virginia, Google CAN index Flash, but that doesn't make it a good strategy.

In fact, if you are competing against other vendors in your market who are trying to do SEO effectively and they do not use Flash on the specific page in question for a specific keyword, I will beat you one hundred zillion dollars (That's a lot of Austin Power money…) that your Flash-based page will be significantly beaten by straight HTML pages on Google. Google can but Google doesn't. So that first annoying distinction is out of the way.

One other thing… You might be advised to alter your HTML so that non-Flash users (a.k.a., Google) can see your non-Flash content, and Flash users (a.k.a., most humans) see your Flash. This is technically possible, but – again – technically possible does not make it desirable. Google hates to see any website (potentially) show one set of content to a user, and one set to Google and in this scenario Google isn't sure that you aren't playing that game. After all, it struggles to index flash. So this scenario – while technically feasible – has some risk to it. It can work, and it may work, but in a competitive area, Google will probably choose sites that are more reliable / straightforward.

All those techies just keep getting confused between something that is technically feasible but not desirable from Google's perspective in this game called Search Engine Optimization. So what is to be done? 
 

Solution No.1: Below the Fold

Ultimately, flash is largely about images and in that sense, Flash isn't really conceptually different to Google than images: it can't really read them. So the humans need images / Flash for a website to be fun, exciting, and engaging, but Google can't really interpret them.

The Solution: use images or Flash for the humans, ABOVE the fold, and place keyword heavy text below the fold. This is an especially good solution for your home page, which has the most SEO power on your website. You simply cannot have a 100% image or 100% Flash home page – that is a disaster. So here is an example of a good design –

• Geico – notice how the Gecko image is at the top, and then below the fold is a ton of keyword heavy text about their business.
• Fillmore Florist – notice how their flowers and cool images are at the top, and below the fold is a ton of keyword text about San Francisco, Flowers, Floral delivery etc.

This sort of Images / Adobe Flash above-the-fold and text below-the-fold caters to both humans AND Google and avoids the Google no-no of showing one content to humans and another to the search engines. 
 

Solution No. 2: Gateway Pages

Another solution to the idea of having your Adobe Flash and having Google / SEO too is to have different pages serve different masters. The important exception here is your home page which must serve both, as discussed above. But beyond your home page, you can conceptualize some pages on your website as being flash with cool graphics and interactivity, but not very SEO-friendly… and other pages being keyword-rich text with little or no flash. Or perhaps the above the fold / Flash – below the fold / text distinction.

Either way, you conceptualize different pages on your website to serve different purposes, and bring in traffic from Google via the textual pages. That works too.

What doesn't work is to wait for Google to prioritize Adobe Flash as an SEO technique. That just isn't going to happen, as the busy search engine has just so many more keyword-rich textual pages to choose from. In a competitive market, Flash – at best – doesn't hurt you, nor help you with SEO. 

Author: Jason McDonald