It's become common knowledge in the SEO world that Flash and search engines do not go hand in hand. Up until recently, I advised clients away from including too much "searchable" content within a Flash file. Why take the risk when search engines are so important to a Web site's success? I blatantly refused to create an all Flash based Web site, since, as an SEO, this was a cardinal sin.

The term "Flash SEO" itself has become a topic of confusion and uncertainty. Flash hides all the most important elements from search engine crawling, such as text, alt image tags, links, navigation structure, and more. How could "Flash search engine optimization" exist at all?

In the end, however, I knew there needed to be a solution that allowed for flash search engine optimization, or interactive search engine optimization in some circles. When a client wants to outshine the competition and make a big impression on consumers, there is no better way than an interactive Web site. As a result, I've taken the time to deeply understand Flash SEO and how it can work to the Web site's advantage.

During my research, I made a shocking discovery. Dreamweaver, probably the number one web development tool used by web developers, allows developers to embed Flash in their web page. To this day, most Flash is embedded in this manner. However, the code used leaves Google's spiders unable to detect the content within that Flash. Dreamweaver is decidedly anti-"Flash SEO". I knew that to perform Flash search engine optimization, I would need to find a method.

One highly recommended approach for Flash SEO is to hand code the Flash embed and utilize a function called SWFObject(). This function essentially detects whether or not a user can view Flash. Code is written so that if the user can view Flash, the Flash movie is displayed. If the user cannot view Flash, alternative content is displayed. This alternative content can be text, images, links, anything you want to be indexed by search engines. The W3C even recommends that every Flash object have alternative content available, but most Web sites do not follow this advice. Since Google and other search engines are not able to index the Flash files, they usually index the alternative content instead. As long as the alternative content is basically the same or a summary of the Flash file, this is all Flash SEO friendly.

This was a good solution for Flash files embedded in an HTML Web site. However, what about 100% Flash based Web sites? This poses more of a problem, and I can only offer Flash SEO Web sites when the client's budget allows it.

Typically 100% interactive Web sites only include one HTML page, with an embedded Flash file which functions as the entire Web site. The navigation and all "pages" of the Web site are located within this one Flash file. This creates a problem, since the Web site lacks site structure, links, and unique page titles. A possible means to an end is to create a separate HTML page for each "page" and embed the Flash file on each page. Or, slice up the Flash file and place each "piece" on the appropriate page. This can often result in a much less seamless transition between pages, than a typical Flash site would allow. There are solutions to this as well.

In the end, Flash SEO, Flash search engine optimization, and interactive search engine optimization are all the same topic. However, depending on who you talk to in the SEO world, you may get different reactions. In my SEO experience, there is a solution to every problem; it just requires the time and money to find it.