flash and search engine ratings

what can i do to be more visible

[skweez]

I have designed a website using flash alone. Only now do I realise that the search engines use text within the body to find websites. How do other flash sites get recognised by the search engines. Has it got something to do with xml. Are there any usefull sites I could look at to help me.

[Macguru]

Hi skweez,

and welcome to WmW. You probably won't like my suggestion, but I think it is simply the best solution. Make a plain vanilla HTML version of the site and let users choose what they want to get. I promote 21 sites set up like this and more than 80 % of users choose the HTML version. That way you will meet both search engines and visitors preferences.

[seth_wilde]

I'll second what macguru said... but if that absolutely turns you off, you might want to check out the cloaking forum [webmasterworld.com]

[digitalghost]

Sites built entirely in Flash have two options, both have already been mentioned.

From personal expericence, Flash sites that utilize cloaking can achieve very good rank. Traffic for those cloaked sites comes nowhere near the traffic for sites that offer an html version.

Combining XML and Flash would almost ensure that only a minority would be able to enjoy the site.

With XML you typically end up with a site that has XML, XSLT and HTML. If you decide to do that, you've entirely redesigned the site and can dispense with the Flash version. ;) That would make most surfers quite happy. Flash is still seen as an annoying novelty rather than a dynamic way to display information by the majority of surfers.

DG

[piskie]

Try converting the site to frames.
One top frame and one bottom frame.
Set one frame to 0 height and the other one to *
Put your flash content in the * frame.
Make a pseudo version of the page in HTML with text links then insert it into the "No Frames" section (after optimising of course).

[Macguru]

I use to be a big NOFRAMES enthousiast, not anymore. I have to disagree with piskie. This "quick fix" can be disastrous. If not it will never beat visible text.

Giving both users and search engines what they want is key. Cloaking will only fix the search engine part for a 100 % flash site.

[piskie]

It works well for a "Quick Fix" and does not hold any "Disasters". There are a lot of framed sites doing well. I would never choose to frame a site myself either but skweez apears to be in a bit of a spot.

[Macguru]

>>and does not hold any "Disasters".

Untill some competitor looks into it. If this thing runs for 6 months, it is certainly in a non competitive arena.

Also, Google will not give the same weight (if any) to the NOFRAMES tag. Many of my "well fed" framesets got PR0'd. And this on perfectly legit framed sites with NOFRAMES in every frameset and visible HTML content. Imagine what can happen with a fake framed site.

[hcstudios]

Hmm...I hadn't heard about the PR0 penalty for framed sites, that's good to know. I've been telling Flash-only folks to do the framed thing, but now I think I'll have to agree that you'll need two versions of the site!

OK, the question now is do you need the whole site in HTML? Or, just one good keyword heavy selling page and a contact us page? I think that depends on the audience, don't you? I mean, a flash designer probably only needs a keyword-heavy page but not the whole site, but a site selling custom woodworking tools probably needs every page in HTML. Anyone agree/disagree?