How Do You Flash A Spider?

[jmiller]

With the growing use of broadband, more and more website developers are looking to Flash to create a more engaging visitor experience. The problem with Flash sites, as many have pointed out, is that they can be can be difficult optimize, especially since Google seems to be the only search engine that tries to crawl them-to a limited extent. But there's more than one way to skin a spider.

Since search engines don't pick up Flash sites very well, one camp of site developers will choose to ignore the application altogether, dismissing it as a waste of time.

But others, like interactive Flash designer and founder of Eyes Unblinded Studios, Zaburi Mutua (Kiogora), feel that successfully developing a Flashy website is important for engaging website visitors (search engines do measure how long people stay at a given site after all).

Zaburi feels that Flash gives him an edge, allowing him to stay ahead of the curve, as technology develops to better handle more complicated applications.

"I do Flash sites because with more and more people using broadband, it gives visitors a more interactive experience," Zaburi told WebProNews.

But how do you deal with search engines that aren't keeping up with the times? How do you get indexed?

Zaburi's method is one echoed by SEO's who optimize Flash sites. With eyesunblinded.com, there is an entry page done in HTML, complete with the usual keyword placements in the description and title tags. The rest of the site is done in Flash.

The 301 redirect, though controversial, seems to be accepted by Google, according to FlashNewz' Joe Balestrino, and is useful in first getting your front page indexed then diverting traffic to the more fun Flash-based realms inside.

"Google states on their site that a using a ‘301' code in HTTP headers site direct is recommended if you have moved your site. So, using this to redirect an HTML page to a Flash site should not be a problem. In other words create an HTML page," writes Balestrino.

Developers' resistance to Flash can only remain a temporary stubbornness as search engines (following Google's lead) will need at some point to find a way to index it. For a glimpse of how search engines robots see your Flash site, check out this nifty web tool, that examines your .swf files.