High Ranking Flash Sites - Is It Possible?

Article Posted 2003 February 07, Friday
by Gord Collins - Bay Street Search Engine Optimization | Toronto, Ontario | Canada

Search Engine Friendly Flash Websites

Search engine marketing consultants and practitioners have long thought that Flash cripples a web site's ranking ability in search engine results. That belief is so ingrained that everyone has given up on the possibility of finding a solution for indexing Flash sites.

There are numerous workarounds available however, and when you apply several of them simultaneously, Flash is no longer a big problem. I myself have discovered 5 unique techniques. Flash web site designers don't realize the tremendous power they have within their sites to rank highly and get around the Flash indexing issue.

Newer search engines such as Google are more forgiving of the Flash SWF format. That's because Google is link-centric. It calculates search relevance via the collective voting power of all the links on the web. Google analyzes pages based on what is called link reputation. Google performs a link analysis by examining what pages purportedly suggest about the pages they are linking to. In this way, it seems to disregard content on the pages themselves. That's just a misconception, because content is being considered.

Google PageRank™ and link reputation reliability are under assault however. Corporations are developing unique domains for their individual departments, which could run into the hundreds. Link farm marketers are selling link reputation and PageRank™ and Google bombers are conspiring to manipulate the index for mostly frivolous reasons.

Google can respond to this assault in two ways...

  1. They do a theme check of the site that has the outbound link and the keyword theme of the site being linked to. If they're similar, the link is acceptable for it's link reputation.
  2. Google can dig deeper into linking relationships and PageRank™ distribution within individual web sites. This takes some of the focus off of web popularity, which may cause quality problems in Google's results pages.

These new factors represent an opportunity for small time web site owners to optimize their own sites and still get ranked in Google. It is especially meaningful for Flash Site owners who have an extra burden trying to get their Flash dominant site ranked.

Google is not indexing the material inside a Flash movie yet but it reads every word on every html page. The key to making a Flash site successful is to employ a linking strategy that redistributes or channels PageRank™ and link reputation within the site. It's surprising how few site designers and copywriters know how to do this.

Redistributing PageRank on Flash Dominant Home Page

In optimizing Flash sites, it is the linking scheme that actually directs PageRank™ to topical pages rich with text. Even on a site that has very little text copy, the few hyperlinks that are present can still distribute PageRank™ and link reputation. Some sites have a lot of PageRank™ due to the number of sites that link to them.

All that has to be done is the strategic deflection of that PageRank™ from your Flash dominant index page to a key main page which has the appropriate text content. Then you can ask your link partners to also point to that page.

Anytime you link through an extra page, you do lose .15 or 15% of the PageRank™, but this is a small price to pay to get your Flash site ranked. By developing and linking additional html content, you can get that PageRank™ back.

Techniques Can Be Learned

As in most search engine optimization tasks, there is a lot of creativity and technique involved. There are spam techniques available such as using layers to hide sections of text, but I wouldn't advise using them. People spam search engines when they don't know how to optimize. By understanding the techniques of managing PageRank™ and link reputation, you can get your site fully indexed and focus your Google PageRank™ on key pages which will compete successfully in the search engine listings.

Gord Collins is the owner of Bay Street Search Engine Optimization, a consulting firm specializing in search engine marketing. He has written two books on SEM entitled; The Professional Guide to Search Engine Writing and Flash Site Optimization Techniques.

His five (05) page search engine marketing article on Search Engine Pay Per Click Programs has been featured on the SEO Consultants Directory.

Gord Collins - Visit the Bay Street Search Engine Optimization Consultants Profile
©2003 Bay Street Search Engine Optimization Toronto Ontario - All rights reserved.

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Last modified: 2008-09-25T07:25:47-0700

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