Many websites are still using Flash technology. This could happen when these websites are barely updated since they were first created. Flash first reached fame during the 1990’s. It was the first way to obtain interactivity. Web developers were able to add animation to their websites. However, Flash became rather infamous when it was used for advertisements and pop-ups. These methods of marketing can be rather intrusive. Flash can also be used to create simple web applications. Buttons can be added and they will do specific things, such as making calculations and others.
With the arrival of HTML5, Flash is considered an outdated technology and it should no longer be used. Flash also has some SEO implications. Despite its inherent versatility, search engine bots are not able to read what’s inside Flash files. It means that many texts and images will not be indexed.
This will have an impact on SEO performances if much our content is embedded in Flash animation. Search engine bots can’t see inside proprietary file formats, so it is important to use standard navigation and implementations based on the latest HTML5 guidance. Inaccessible content will contribute nothing to search engine rank, so it is important to make sure that bots are able to easily see everything inside our website.
Luckily, many designers have abandoned Flash technology, despite its attractive design capabilities and overall interactivity. Flash could help us to achieve improved search engine rankings. Because Flash animation is no longer used, it would be necessary to create design and write content from scratch.
This will have positive SEO implications. Search engine bots should be able not only reading the text-based content, but also text in the navigation structure. There is a tool called swf2html that can convert swf files into HTML format. Although we don’t have to use the actual HTML file, we could still grab important content and some of the code for our own HTML file.
The extracted content should contain important keywords and various data. We should know that the tool produce HTML files with relatively disfigured design. For this reason, the HTML is largely unusable, especially if we want to have significantly revamped design layout. Even so, this is a large step towards having full compliance with HTML5 standards.
Some of the basic codes with some embedded content can be copied to our own design. This still provides a faster way than re-writing manually things that are included in the Flash animation. As long as text can be extracted, we will be able to achieve many things.
It is clear that converting Flash-based design to a HTML one can be performed relatively easily. However, we should consider issues related to the conversion process. Our website could significantly depend on Flash technology that we need to build everything from scratch.
We may need to create everything from scratch, including the database, CSS and XML. We should make sure that everything will be able to work properly. Caution should be exercised with our planning. If our website previously depends on smooth animations, we will need a radically different concept with HTML codes.
