Flash animation is great for web design but is it good for SEO? There are split beliefs on this topic. Some web designers that like to use Flash in all their websites will say “absolutely, YES” while others say “absolutely NOT!”
Adobe Flash is a programmable format that allows designers to illustrate using interactive multimedia elements to create things such as: movies, buttons, banners, games, maps, and more. It’s a popular way for web developers to add animation to a project and build interactive, visually appealing websites.
Many web developers LOVE flash animation and use it in all of their website projects. They design entire websites using Flash. This is because the websites look nice, and have various animations, moving graphics, cool audio effects and vector graphics, etc. The problem is however, that Flash is a poor substitute for HTML and some search engines are unable to crawl and index websites made completely with Flash. Flash movies also often take a long time to load so you are potentially loosing customers who don’t want to wait.
In June 2008, Google announced that they improved their indexing of websites containing Flash files. Has this really helped? Randfish over at SEOmoz did a great post on Flash and SEO. He outlines the following reasons as to why he believes that Flash and SEO don’t mix.
- Different Content is Found on the Same URLs
- The Way Text is Broken Down
- Flash Can Get Embedded Resulting in Low PR and Link Juice
- You Can’t Earn External Links with Flash Like You Can With HTML
- Basic SEO is Often Missing with Flash
- A Lot of Flash is Not Crawlable by Search Engines
Why We Like Flash:
As for web designers, animation and moving graphics look really nice on websites. It also works well for banner ads and advertisements as compared to GIFs.
Why We DON’T Like Flash:
Flash movies are slow to load. Oftentimes when a Flash Home page is visited, it takes many seconds (sometimes minutes) to load. This can potentially result in lost business. When people are online, they want to get to their destination quickly and not wait for fancy graphics to pop-up before they can go anywhere on your website. They will click OUT of your website and go to your competitors’ site before waiting for your movie to load.
Flash animation is also not great for SEO – not yet at least. It doesn’t harm your SEO as far as penalties with Google but it does not allow for proper optimization. Google has made some improvements with how they index Flash, but there is still a lot to be done before search engines are able to fully index Flash and have it compare to an HTML website with proper SEO implemented.
Bottom Line:
Flash is great for advertisements, banners, etc., but not so much for SEO – not yet. This is bound to change in the near future. If you currently want to use Flash on a website – do so with caution. Keep it to a minimum and don’t have your entire website built on Flash animation. This can harm you in the SERPS.
