Flash and Floater Text

[sodahip]

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice/guidance on an issue that I am having with a designer. He has designed a web site entirely in flash with an HTML home page that links into the movie.

He has told me in order to keep the previous site's rankings in the search engines he has created 130 or so different pages with the same HTML code as the home page, but has added unique "Floater" text to each so that the search engines 'see' them as individal pages. It appears he has also created unique Title Tags and Meta Data for these pages as well. He insits that it's legit and W3C compliant for accessibilty - but I tend to disagree.

Would this be considered spam? I have always been in the camp of Flash and SEO don't mix - but if this is truly legit and a way to get your flash site ranked then I'd like to learn more about it. Although I just get a spammy feeling about it.

When I do the site:www.domain.com search in Google it returns 138 results - all diffrent Titles, Descriptions, URLs etc - but all go to the same page (visually).

Any thoughts/comments on this will be greatly appreciated.

[Christian at Cabo]

Flash and Search engines don't mix and they won't i remember in the ses NY of this year somebody ask to the panel (google guy, yahoo guy, ask guy and msn guy) what are you doing to index flash? and one from the panel (don't remember exactly who was) says nothing.

Yes i agree with you i think what he wants to do is spamm but anyway the webpages or websites should be created with the purpose of deliver content, messages or products to the consumer in the easiest possible way, flash doesn't always acomplish this.

Remember that people on internet is looking for information/products in specific and they are very clear about it, somebody at the SES says bored sites works! :)

Anyway that's my 2 cents i wish you lots of succes :)

[sodahip]

Thanks Christian at Cabo!

I've been arguing with this guy that waht he is doing is not right, and he just won't back down...very frustrating. I feel bad since this former client is caught in the middle.

They had a great HTML site, ranking well converting lots of visitors and they got the wool pulled over their eyes by this designer touting that his Flash site will get ranked, well I guess he has succeeded by spamming. :mad:

Now I am in a dillemma - do I report the spam to Google - or do I just let it go?? I want to tell this former client that they are spamming the search engines, but I don't want to sound like I am slamming their desgin agency just to get SEO work...ah well...I'll think about it some more and consult with some more of my co-workers...

Cheers!

R

[evilgreenmonkey]

You can use a Macromedia SDK which makes Flash a little easier to index by spiders, although few designers use it. If the SE can read your Flash, it will see that each doorway page goes to the same content and is therefore spam.

In summary, give your designer a slap around the chops and tell him to change each of his "special unique pages" into good old content based HTML pages (giving the user a choice between flashy flash and old school HTML).

:p

Rob

[Robert_Charlton]

sodahip - You have a right to be concerned. Sounds like this Flash designer will be a total disaster for your search rankings, and his SEO techniques are iffy at best...

Here are three threads that discuss some of the factors that need to be considered. Note that in several threads, Flash designers were adament that their efforts would rank well...

Optimizing Flash files for the search engines
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=10808

SEO for Flash Site
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=10238

Organic SEO for a Flash Site?
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=37012#post37012

[sodahip]

So now the designer has made the text visible...but waaaaaaaay down the page - it feels like you have to scroll forever to get it. Plus it's unformatted and looks like crap :mad: and in my humble opinion NOT a viable solution, in fact I think it is worse than the way he had it before. I guess there's just no getting through to this guy :rolleyes:

Thanks again for all your thoughts and comments!

R

[g1smd]

Sounds like it looks like spam.


Be worried.