How to SEO a Flash Website
As a general rule, I dislike Flash websites. They're clunky. They're expensive. They can place a monster load on your server. They can take forever to load. They're difficult to update. Often they seem kind of pretentious. Most importantly, they don't get spidered and therefore don't show up in search results. Flash elements within sites add some pizazz, but building an entire site from Flash makes no sense in most cases.
Even so, you may want a Flash site. You might just be that kind of person or you might be in that kind of business (design, multimedia, etc.). If that is the case, cleverness and diligence can still get you the all-important pull traffic provided by search engines. Read on to find out how.
The solution is simple: Build an XHTML landing page with a button that says "Enter." Clicking the "Enter" button starts your Flash. You can SEO the hell out of that page using all kinds of nifty white-hat tricks, but that will still not be enough. You need to place an easy-to-index site underneath the landing page. There are two ways to do this.
Method One, the Honest Way:
Instead of having one "Enter" button, you can have two buttons, "Enter HTML Site" and "Enter Flash Site." Build a basic XHTML site optimized on your keywords. The engines will index those pages. Put a "View our Flash Site" BLAM! on every page of that site if you really want people to view your Flash site.
OR
You can put your Flash in the <head> of an html document and use Javascript to deliver flash to flash-enabled visitors (most people nowadays) and html content (in the <body> of the document) to non-flash visitors like search spiders. Come to think of it, this is the more elegant way of doing it. Here's a bit more detail on how to do that.
Either way, you need to have an html site in addition to a Flash site.
Method Two, the Sneaky Way:
Place a hidden link (make the link the same color as your page background) at the bottom of your landing page. The link leads to extremely simple HTML pages loaded with your keywords and BLAMs to "View our Main Site." Spiders will index those pages, and people will find them. When they find those pages, many will click to see the Flash site, the one you want them to see.
Of these two methods, I would recommend the first for various reasons, chief among them: Some people (like me) prefer non-flashy "Just the facts, Ma'am" sites. Give the people what they want.
That's it. Simple, right?
The moral of the story is that you should not rely entirely on a Flash site if you are in business and want new clients to find you through search engines.
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