My clients website od 100% Flash...Will my SEO efforts be wasted?

[AnthonyGrillo]

My client has a Photography website and has an al carte design.  It's in Flash and in 3 years only 3 pages of say 50 are indexed.

Are my efforts being wasted?Should I redesign the site in an SEO friendly language?

Or, if I build out a huge link building campaign it doesn't matter if I am in Flash or not?

Thanks

[EGOL]

Will my SEO efforts be wasted?

"Wasted" probably isn't the best word... "fractionally effective" would be better.

** It's in Flash and in 3 years only 3 pages of say 50 are indexed.**

It sounds like one of two problems:  A) spiders can't cross your links.... or.... B) you don't have any inbound links from pages already in the search engine's index.  Most likely A)

Should I redesign the site in an SEO friendly language?

That's what I would do.  You can still have some flash on the site.  But it would be flash elements rather than the entire design.

Or, if I build out a huge link building campaign it doesn't matter if I am in Flash or not?

Flash and a lack of spidering are probably the problems.  Fix them.

[AnthonyGrillo]

thanks so much...I was leaning in that direction....

I guess this question comes across a lot, but I read that google can read certain aspects of Flash these days..Just not my clients??

Thanks

[EGOL]

Just not my clients??

Maybe.... But, I would avoid all possible problems by having copious visible text and all important links on the site in easy-to-spider HTML.

[RyanKent]

While Google may have some technical ability to crawl flash, they don't actually index flash content.

My suggestion is to take a look at the site the way Google sees it. Disable flash on your browser, then look at your site. The method to disable flash varies by browser. For FireFox use your menubar Tools > Add-ons > Plugins > Shockwave Flash and press Disable, then restart your browser.

Once the flash is disabled, visit your client's site. Now you can gain a much better understanding as to whether or not there is a problem.

It is possible to develop a flash-based site AND have it fully indexed. It requires extra development effort. The site needs to be developed in HTML in addition to flash. Basically you are duplicating the site in HTML so users without flash can view the site. When Google crawls the site, they will see all the HTML content and can index it.

Keep in mind the HTML site should be almost identical to the flash site. Stuffing extra content or altering the content of the HTML would be considered a black-hat technique which could cause your site to incur a penalty. Just use the practice as intended, to offer your site's content to those without flash.

[AnthonyGrillo]

Thanks you both. This community is Awesome!