“Is flash good for SEO?” is a question I’ve been asked quite a few times, I wrote a post about it some time ago, to which I got a bit of flack, mainly from Flash designers… I wrote another post just over a year ago in response, to explain that although efforts have been made to make flash better for SEO – it’s still not good.

This post is basically to say – Flash is still not good for SEO, regardless of what some flash designers will argue – but this isn’t to say flash should be avoided all together.

Yes – work has been done to make flash content index-able, but a site built in flash will still struggle against a site not built using flash – and as far as I’m concerned that will always be the case. I know this from experience, although in theory flash sites should struggle slightly less now due to the improvements made over the past couple of years – but in practice, I’ve not seen any difference.

Another thing which will hinder flash sites, is that Google have started to include site speed in the algorithm. Flash sites are often a lot slower loading, which will hinder SEO to some degree – maybe only a very small amount, but every little helps…

Also – if your site is built in flash completely, and if you don’t have an alternative html version, then some visitors won’t be able to use your site – even if that’s only 2 people out of every hundred – this could be two potential customers.

Plus – if your site takes time to load due to flash elements, a lot of people will get bored waiting & will hit their back button – people want things fast online, very few of us will sit & wait for a page to load.

So, my answer to this – is use flash elements in your site if required – but avoid having your site built completely in flash, if search engine traffic is important to you, and if you really want your site to be the great business tool that it should be.

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Filed under: SEO General

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