Flash versus SEO

One of our web designers Matt asked me to write a post about Flash versus SEO and he basically wanted me to fight the corner for Flash as he thinks there should be more of it about on the world wide web. I said I’d see what I could do knowing that it would be a hard job but thinking that some thorough research may throw up some arguments supporting the Flash team…….Sadly this hasn’t really been the case, sorry Matt!

All my research has done is reinforce my initial belief that Flash is bad for SEO. Bad as in avoid it at all costs unless you are a huge brand (huge like in the realms of Coca Cola or Nike) and then you don’t need to really worry about writing your content for SEO purposes. Everyone else should avoid Flash like the plague. Don’t listen to your creative web designers who like to make things look pretty, it doesn’t matter how pretty your website looks if it can’t be found.

Now I realise that this is a subject pretty much discussed to death, over and over at the very least, but I promised to look into it some more so here we are. And it is still a subject worthy of attention as some camps claim that Flash can now be indexed by search engines (news and comments on this welcome) and it still creates a chasm between web designers and SEO consultants - who let’s face it are two very different kettles of fish. As different as chalk and cheese, like “lipstick on a pig” (the most used phrase in our office since Hannah thought it was a good concept for a marketing campaign following the recent coining by Mr. Obama).

But back to Flash versus SEO, I accept that Flash can be useful for “progressive enhancement” and there are ways to get your site indexed still when using Flash but I still stick to the opinion that less is more – I personally can’t stand waiting for Flash to load and I am definitely one of those users that immediately hits the back button before a site even loads if it is built entirely in Flash (they shouldn’t even be allowed to exist they’re soooo annoying).

So not a strong defence I realise but a little Flash here and there, a banner or two I would argue for as it makes daily life on the internet a little more pleasant. And more to the point does exactly what it is supposed to do – it “progressively enhances” a website built to web standards. That way if a browser doesn’t support Flash a website’s functionality and the availability of it’s content won’t be compromised. So no problems or annoyance.

So that’s my conclusion – use Flash on well built websites when necessary to show videos or for animation to illustrate something already in text form or use sparingly for design enhancement, beyond that that I can’t find an argument for Flash if SEO is required – I hope that’s a fair comment Matt? (please feel free to respond, just don’t be too horrible to me)!