Best Practices for Search-Optimized Flash Development

In spite of what you may have heard, it is possible to have both engaging Flash content and happy search engine spiders.

For several years, there has been tension in the web design and development community regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and the use of Adobe Flash for site content and applications. Flash naysayers have and still do argue that you should almost never use the platform if you care at all about search engine performance and site traffic. Meanwhile, Flash aficionados argue that the user experience is more important than Google experience.

So which is it? Who’s right? In this post, I am going to:

1. Explain why both naysayers and aficionados make valid points
2. Describe the state of Flash indexability, and
3. Share several Flash development best practices that you can begin using in your projects right away.

All told, I hope this post eases tension and encourages more developers to consider using the powerful Adobe Flash platform in a way that is good for both users and spiders.

Given search engine capabilities plus a desire to both make site content indexable and to create good user experiences, there are some best practices that will help ensure search engines and people alike are getting the most out of your Flash applications.

• Use external XML or text files. XML offers search engines a structured and semantic format for indexing site content. And it makes it easier to implement multi-language versions of an application. By keeping your content layer separate from your presentation layer you’ll have a better overall application.
• Create Unique URLs for Important Sections. “Creating unique URLs for important sections of your SWF file, based on the keywords for which you want to optimize, will help search engines navigate into your SWF application and provide targeted results for the most relevant content,” wrote SEO expert Damien Bianchi, in a March 2009 article. To create these unique links, you may want to employ SWFAddress or UrlKit.
• Use the HTML noscript Tag. It can be a good idea to put important site or application content in side of HTML noscript tags, which effectively puts your content into a search engine spider’s favorite language. If you are using external XML, files, you can even load the content dynamically on the server-side.
• Use XSL When Feasible. XSL can define XML formatting and presentation, so you can use it to single XML source to control both Flash content and HTML content, like navigation. You’ll make the entire site’s content searchable and you will be using an effective site development strategy.