How to optimize a flash site

Every internet users love a great flash intro. The big myth is that Flash sites can not get listed in the search engines. But here I am putting some good points for all web designers, to get rank for their flash website.

Workarounds for Optimizing Flash Sites

Input metadata

This is a very important approach. Flash development tools allow easily adding metadata to your movies, so there is no excuse to leave the metadata fields empty.

Provide alternative pages

For a good site it is a must to provide html only pages that do not force the user to watch the Flash movie. Preparing these pages requires more work but the reward is worth because not only users, but search engines as well will see the html only pages.

Use Macromedia Software Developer Kit (SDK)

Macromedia’s Search Engine SDK includes an application that is called swf2html, which extracts links and text from a flash movie, then returns the data into an HTML file. The Macromedia Search Engine SDK is designed for search engine application.

Use Splash Pages Sparingly and Appropriately

Warnings:

1) Never use Cloaking method
2) Never place invisible framesets or using invisible layers in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to present content to the search engines