Your Client Insists On Flash - What Do You Do? Options

[cre8pc]

I'm working on an article on FLASH and wanted to get an update on how the SEO/M industry responds to requests from clients who insist or ask that FLASH remain.

Commonly, FLASH is used for splash page intros, or on home pages to preview products, or used to flash marketing messages (sometimes near the logo)...

As an SEO responsible for page indexing, how to advise your clients?

Are there "best practices"? Do you ask for an outright ban on FLASH?

Other solutions or experiences?

[Wit]

Umm it depends on whether they are paying for the design or for ranking. I mean you gotta be practical.

But hey, flash can be embedded into regular webpages. IMV there's room for compromise.

[Respree]

I don't have any experience with creating Flash pages, but I thought this article was rather interesting in trying the marry the best of both worlds.

My recommended Flash SEO method uses a DIV with search-engine-accessible, primary content, and a Javascript function called SWFObject() to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. When an appropriate version of Flash player is present, the Javascript manipulates the page's document object model (DOM) to replace the primary content with the Flash movie. Most search engine spiders can't handle Flash, so they will elect to view the primary content. The primary content may contain links, headings, styled text, images—anything we can add to an ordinary HTML page. With SEO copyediting and coding skills applied to the primary content, Flash becomes a non-issue.

With that said, I'm of the opinion that just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should - i.e. gratuitous Flash. If, however, it can help meet some strategic objective for the site without compromising other objectives, then by all means.

This post has been edited by Respree: Nov 10 2007, 11:44 AM

[yannis]

A bit of flash - cleverly designed into the layout - can be a good compromise and it does not have to affect SEO
at all. One such website is the Rijksmuseum website in Amsterdam. What you think?

One of the most negative aspects of flash is that even with a quick connection it is inevitably very slow. Just stumble and make a note how many times you move on when you realize it is a flash site.

Yannis

[bwelford]

I agree. A small amount of Flash is tolerable. Often you can get almost the same impact by designing without Flash. The other problem is that I'm not sure how you rescale a Flash insert to accommodate different screen resolutions. Is that easy?

[EGOL]

I agree with Yannis, that you can embed flash elements within a page and still have a basic HTML wrapper that can be filled with text content, completely optimized with HTML tagging.

For some institutions, "impression" is much more important than "rankings".

See if you can convince the client to attack both.

(I might place the Rijksmuseum in the impression over rankings category - most will search for them by name or by "amsterdam museum" --- but I think that they are a bit over the top with the sound - and poorly maintained with two of the feature links not working. Really a let down after their impressive opening inspired me to look at art.)

[AbleReach]

What do you do if they think they've got to have it?

Last Spring a potential client said he wanted "a zen-like Flash site." He had in mind something that looked like a site he admired. If not for gratuitous Flash awfulness - the "click here to enter our flash site" link and using images in place of text - the site could have been done with CSS quite elegantly. He couldn't wrap his mind around that and I lost him.

If I had suggested using *some* Flash, just because he said so, instead of telling him he didn't need it, he probably would have been happy to have "a Flash site" that was a site with Flash touches, and I would have been happy that he didn't have the baggage of the site he admired.

I think there's room for flexibility. They may not be prepared for the idea that it's not all or nothing.

[Nadir]

I would recommend that clients use Flash for animations only. If they insist on using Flash for content, then no problem: I use SWFobject , which allows search engines spiders to view the HTML version of a text, and regular visitors will see the Flash version.

[Dave Davis]

It's all about compromise and customer education. In fact, many conflicts of opinion on design issues come down to this.

If you know what you are doing you should be able to sit down with a client and explain exactly WHY going completely flash will not only hurt their business and lose them customers, but will also lose them MONEY. When you put it like that, they tend to take a step back.

They are paying YOU to do the best possible job for them. Even if your job is just the design, IMHO, you still have a responsibility in some small way to the success of their business.

If you hire a contractor to put a new roof on your house, do you want the latest fancy coloured roof that the Jones' have or do you want the contractor to explain to you that you shouldn't go for that roof because in two years, it will leak and will cost you money because it is impossible to insulate correctly in the winter?

[DianeV]

Kim, you've mentioned using Flash on page intros (the intro page to the site?), for product previews on the home page, or for marketing messages.

First of all, I don't see a real problem in using *some* Flash on a site, so long as it doesn't interfere with site visitors reading the content, or at least not in important areas. For instance, when they're reading the product info and are about to click the Add to Cart button, that's not the time to distract them.

For product previews, sometimes nothing works as well as *showing* them how something works or displaying the product in its best possible environment. Walls of text (and I'm a writer) will help to support it, but a Flash movie (with voiceover?) can get the point across like nothing else can. Of course, you could do this other ways — QuickTime, etc., but it's kind of hassle to have to determine what plugins visitors have, etc.; actually, I've never done that but assume that it can be done, but then you'd have to provide the same content in a variety of plugin formats. In such a case, you could do a lot with a Flash movie. How is this worse for SEO than having images? Since the site is not all Flash, there *are* no SEO issues so long as you actually optimize the site.

However, an all-Flash home page or a splash page for the home page that contains only a Flash movie (which, at least, gives offers a slightly better optimization scenario) may not be the best use of visitor attention. Thing is, anyone who's studied server logs for a few minutes will immediately notice that website visitors don't all enter on the home page. Of those entering an internal page, how many then go to the home page to view the spectacular Flash announcement that they don't know is there? And, of those entering through the home page, how many times do you want to force them to see that same movie? What if they've got Flash disabled and nothing displays on the home page?

But what if you're introducing a blockbuster movie? Or a band that, after eons, is on tour right now?

How about a site that's geared to sell item(s) for which there's an infomercial? They've seen the infomercial and are now visiting the site. A salesman will tell you it's time to get them while they're interested. Show them the item, in action, with bits of the infomercial. Why not? That's what attracted them in the first place.

I'm hardly against Flash, but I think these things need to be thought out, in terms of what is pertinent. Theme from Rocky blaring while you're displaying your logo spinning around the globe? Not so great. Blockbuster movie or infomercial product? Maybe. Even probably.

See, there are always "what if" scenarios, rather than a firm rule that must not be broken. And it demands fluidity of thought.

[Pittbug]

I've dealt with this issue on a few occasions and it usually has 3 outcomes:

1) client is unhappy because you can't effectively optimize a flash website. They've already paid for their webdesign and leave unhappy.

2) They scale back the flash and replace many of the textual components with html. This is quite costly and usually only the larger companies can absorb this additional design cost. Typically they had a great ranking html site and the reason they're approaching an seo is because after the new and improved flash site, organic traffic is down.

3) They create a html version of the site which you can optimize with no problems at all. The only problem here is that sometimes the client will want the html to mimic the flash part of the site so much so, that they use javascript and other non seo friendly techniques. This decision is usually made by an upper manager who is more concerned about the look and feel. What many non web savvy people fail to realize is that the html version needs to be designed for accessibility and search engines. Still, the problem with this solution is that they won't give up the flash intro homepage, so you have to do a lot of deep link building.

[joedolson]

What do you do if they think they've got to have it?

Whether Flash is valuable depends so completely on context that I can't make a wide open, broad-spectrum decision. If they think they need it, they're probably wrong --- it's rare that Flash is "necessary" --- but if they want it, there may be a perfectly good reason to implement Flash on their site in some way or another. It may not be the way THEY imagine it, of course.

One thing I absolutely won't do is advise on or build a completely Flash-based site. This is nothing against Flash; but I don't have anything even approaching the skill or knowledge about Flash to make that accessible.

Having some Flash, though? Yeah, OK. As long as it's sensibly implemented, there's really no reason to avoid it completely. Just don't use it in stupid ways!

[Wit]

All that said, I still don't like Flash. I keep designing my pages in a 2001-style 56k-modem-sorta way. Doctor please tell me: am I getting too old for the job?

[bwelford]

I'm sure there's still a slice of the audience out there, Wit, that appreciates you're still around. Of course, whether they are the prospects with money to buy what you're selling .. that's a question you'll have to decide.

[iamlost]

When Flash was required (as a specification) I always subcontracted its development (to a teenage whiz ). It is certainly significantly more useful and accessible today than five plus years ago.

That said SE bot and human visitor accessibility issues are not necessarily identical. And which of what might be best practice depends on how Flash is to be integrated into the individual page.

With every part of a site there can be multiple options and it is best that both designer and client discuss the pluses and minuses of each from the perspective of that unique site and its objectives.

From a purely SEO perspective, i.e. getting a URL that is wholely or partially implimented in Flash (1) indexed and (2) well ranked for targeted terms, I would stipulate what needs to be done. The client wants Flash, fine. The client agrees to SEO requirements, fine. The client does not agree to those requirements and retains Flash, his choice, his responsibility. If you neglect getting client to sign off on decisions (and their consequences) that is very much your problem - stop being so silly.

[cre8pc]

First of all, thank you very much for all the responses. It's a huge help for what I'm working on (getting the perspective of SEO's).

Question.

Is there a difference between optimizing something like a FLASH presentation made up of images (like travel sites do with rotating images of sites to see, or hotels showing different shots of a facility) and FLASH video, such as Webpronews video (I think they're an example of this, but PLEASE correct me or provide a better example.)

Are the workarounds and solutions the same or similar?

[Pittbug]

Kim

I know google can index some text within a flash presentation, but not very well. So typically I would just treat it like an image and work in some text around it. One of the flash videos I saw on a client's site had some really nice content, which was a message from the CEO. I recommended they link to a page containing the transcript of the video... not sure if they ever went through with it before I left.

Take 5...

Just checked... they didn't... oh well.

[Thejspot]

I have quite a few clients that insist on Flash. And for some industries you don't need to worry too much about trying hard to optimise it because in a field like Graphic Design, everyone at the top has used Flash. It seems in these instances that other factors matter more.

I'm wondering if the SEs have an allowance for some keywords which lend themselves to be better explained visually?

Anyway, I guess I've just noticed it doesn't matter for some industries, depends on the keywords you're trying to optimise for.

[Pittbug]

Thejspot: Careful jumping to any conclusions like that. I've seen some business websites in a specific industry use flash, cloaking and hidden text to get rankings and I'm sure it's much more widespread than just the industry I was looking at. Remember BMW.de?

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-o...tional-webspam/

[A.N.Onym]

So here I am with a chairman of the company wanting a Flash website, because some other similar company has done so. Also, they want a really cool looking website. Not a hint at performance, though.

What would you do?
What would you do to convince the client at least to use HMTL/CSS/images/AJAX for the beauty/exotic functions?

How can you tell the customer that he'll be losing money? What if you don't have enough data in the client's industry to make a valid claim?

Thanks.

P.S. Kim, where's the article? I'd like to read it.