Flash SEO Using the Noscript Tag and a Little HTML
I’ve just helped a very small reclaimed timber website get their first taste of SEO. Problem was the work allowed no additional development of the website, the budget was very, very small and the whole site is a single flash file. Ouch.
How do you optimise a one page flash website on an ultra low budget with no chance of changing the flash to a static HTML site? Fortunately, we all recieved a wonderful reminder of the value of <NOSCRIPT> tags from MSN’s very own Nathan Buggia at the recent SMX London.
In a situation where your content is invisible to search engines because of media rich files like flash, Nathan recommended creating what he called a “down level experience”. Here’s a screenshot from his “SEO for Web 2.0″ presentation:
By using the <noscript> tags, we’ve at least got the chance to add some meaningful, search engine indexable content. By taking this approach you can quickly and easily apply some beautifully tagged semantic HTML using H1′s, H2′s and even H3′s. Sweet!
Here’s the before and after of our example website:
Before:
After using the <noscript> tag:
I’ll return to this post and update you on the progress when the new SEO changes have been indexed and I can take a measure of the site’s ranking position. 
6 Responses to “Flash SEO Using the Noscript Tag and a Little HTML”
Leave a commentthank u =), i was looking for something like this
Google has a very good indexing system for flash content!!!
Check this example (search google with u can play)
You will see how google returns text from a flash component (placed on right side of the screen)
Using display:none to fool search engines? Not a good idea.
It is signific ant when content is invisible to search engines because of media rich files like flash
In looking at the example code from the presentation, I don’t see a tag pair. I do see an alternative approach where you hide the section from users with scripting enabled.
To perhaps answer the other poster’s comment, since the search engine (historically) hasn’t run script, they won’t process the hidden content parameter, thus no penalty – if I’m guessing correctly. But my understanding is that the search engines are getting better at reading and perhaps running some scripting code, but that’s just hearsay on my part, I have no verifiable source.
Sorry about that, I had put in the noscript tag pair with brackets in my comment and it dropped it out, thinking I meant to do some coding. Anyway, that sentence should read “I don’t see a noscript /noscript tag pair,”