Search Engine Optimization for a Flash+HTML site

Every once in a while I get emails like this next one :

I was talking with [someone] who giving  me your email for try to tweak my website  www.galeriadelarte.org in google engine at this time no match, seams google robot can't get anything from my site, is programming in PHP and Flash.

To which I usually reply with an almost ready made template with the same kind of advise.

Although Google’s claiming to get better at understanding Flash, working together with Adobe, I generally advise against massive use of Flash, especially in the case where it’s used as the only form of in-site navigation. Still, following are a few things you can do for a Flash-HTML combined website :

• Create a sitemap for your site http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34654. Submit your Sitemap at :
  • Yahoo Site Explorer
  • Google webmaster tools
    • Turn on Tools->Enhanced Image Search.
    • Set preferred domain to “www.”
• Search Engines have some real difficulties with Flash. It’s very not SEO-friendly. Get links that will point to your php generated pages rather than your main flash website. Get as many links as you can, submit it to a lot of free web directories. Ask your friends to links to you with meaningful titles and anchor text. This is one of the most important factors. In the <a href=”” title=””> it’s the title tag. If you’re involved in forums, add the link to your site with your keywords in your signatures.
• Make navigation in your website easy with interlinking between pages. When you don’t have others linking to you, this will count. When you link, link with good keywords.

And the tips for the in-site HTML files are the same just about anywhere :

To get higher on search engine page rankings (SERPS) you should :

• Make sure your page title is meaningful (<TITLE></TITLE>)
• Make sure you have H1, H2, H3 headings in your pages (<H1></H1><H2></H2>)
• Optimize your images with keywords
  • Name of file.
  • The ALT / TITLE tags in the <img src=”” alt=””> images.
• Try to use pathnames that would serve as meaningful permalinks.
• Add metatags
• Use social websites to point to you. For example – to simplify submitting to social websites, use Social Poster (The “Dofollow for SEO” is the more relevant).
  • Choose the right keywords in the title of your submission.
  • Add relevant tags, try to make it appealing.
• Redirect to WWW : Do this next one only if you understand what you’re doing.