If you imagine Flash content to be like an image in your site, it's a bit easier to think about. Search engines also can't read images (i.e. know what the image is about), which is why 'alt tags' allow you to define a text description in the HTML. This not only allows the search engine to 'read' the image, but also increases the accessibility of your site, which is a key goal of the W3C organisation in promoting strong standards on the web. (http://www.w3.org/).

Flash can be seen in much the same way. Although the contents of a Flash movie can be more complicated than a single image, it can still be correctly represented as readable text and therefore indexable by search engines, with the added benefit of meeting accessibility guidelines.

SiteMaker's Flash infrastructure has been developed over a number of years and we constantly strive to meet the W3C standards for accessibility, and ensure all our sites are represented both in readable HTML and as Flash.

The key behind this is the use of 'Progressive Enhancement'. This is the principle that suggests that you provide content to your visitors starting at the lowest level and increase the richness of the content depending on what the visitor is able to see. For example, for text only browsers of those with images turned off the site will display text only, if you can detect an image browser, display images, if you can detect a Flash Player, display Flash, etc. The Progressive Enhancement technique allows you to swap out bits of content as and when you detect an improved capability by your visitor's browser in a seamless way. (See section 6 of W3C guidelines, http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-new-technologies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement).

This is exactly how it works with SiteMaker. To get the full experience we require that visitors to your site have Flash Player 7 or higher (95% of web browsers according to Adobe http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html), and a browser with JavaScript enabled. However, if your visitors don't have this installed, they will still get a 'text and images' only version of the site.

The 'text and images' only version of your site contains exactly the same information as your normal Flash SiteMaker site. It includes a link to every visible page in your site, all the text on the pages, all the images, all the links, etc. Every time you update your site, the Flash is updated, and the 'text and images' only version is also updated.

It is this 'text and images' only version which will be 'read' by search engines, as they will not execute the JavaScript nor get inside the Flash version. This means to search engines, your site will appear as a normal HTML site, and be read in the normal way. How well the site is then indexed comes down to you.

SiteMaker allows you to set page titles, and meta tags in the HTML, just like a normal HTML site. And as every piece of text, link and image on your page is represented in the HTML, you can also employ the same techniques of keyword density and relevance with titles, use of links, etc., as are normally recommended by SEO companies.

So there you have it. Flash content, like everything else, can be done badly or done well. We do it well, which means your site is just as effectively indexed as any other site on the internet. So you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of our unique Flash based application making it easy to design and build your site, without worrying about how it's built.

We are constantly looking at ways of increasing our Search Engine Optimisation capabilities, and making sure that we are compatible with other leading techologies. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Useful links

Articles on Search Engine Optimisation - Part 1 of Series