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Back when Flash technology was new, many people opted for all Flash web sites because of the ‘cool’ factor.
Today we see a lot more hybrid web sites (html sites with some Flash elements) because all-Flash sites are a nightmare for search.
Search engines have a very hard time knowing what text is in your Flash documents and then putting the appropriate weight where it belongs. In this post I will show you how to get search credit for Flash content.
The problem
As a web designer and a search marketer I have to strike a balance between creating web sites that look good and are well optimized for search. One of the biggest problems I run into is wanting the title of my page to have a unique font. With normal HTML this would be impossible since most computers wouldn’t have the font I chose and a default font would be shown in it’s place.
I could create an image of my title and use an alt tag to get some search credit. But that is not the best solution. Ideally we want to get H1 or H2 credit for the text in the title.
The solution
I told my web developer brother Jesse Knowles about this problem and he quickly created a javascript that replaces everything within a specified tag, like the H1 tag with whatever Flash content I choose. The robots will read and index the H1 content and the search engines display the Flash content.
The on page code looks like:
<h1>TITLE GOES HERE</h1>
<script>loadFlashSEO("h1", "swf/title.swf", 490, 63, "swf/")</script>
The first line is the H1 tag that the robots read. The second line calls the javascript function that tells the browser to show the specified flash file wherever the H1 tag is found on the page. After the file name is the width and height of the Flash file followed by its location relative to the page. Pretty simple.
Not only does this code allow you to get search credit for Flash content, but Jesse also made the bounding box in IE disappear.
Examples
A couple examples of this code in action are the Wakamow Heights Bed & Breakfast web site that I did an Internet Marketing Case Study on a few weeks back and the Homestyle Select web site. Notice how the titles are in Flash. Look at the source to see the solution.
Download the files
It is great to have web sites that look good and perform optimally in the search engines. This javascript helps accomplish this.
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