As mentioned in my previous post about Flash and SEO goals, the use of Flash needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis for each website project. When making this evaluation, keep in mind a new idea that I just found for Flash that help your website look better, helping it pop a little more than others, but without sacrificing SEO. It’s called sIFR, or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, and it makes your fonts pretty.

Basically, sIFR uses a combination of JavaScript, CSS, and Flash to find and replace all the text that you specify to be whatever font you like. This means not being restricted to fonts like Times New Roman and Helvetica while still remaining accessible, search engine friendly, and semantic.

In addition to accessibility, sIFR can also be selected, copied, and pasted by users and the load time is virtually nothing – the average user has no idea anything different than usual is going on behind the scenes. Plus, sIFR is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux with JavaScript turned on and Flash 6 or greater installed. It also works on all major browsers (IE, FireFox, Safari) as well as even some minor ones (Omniweb, Konqueror).

What’s great about sIFR is that, as I mentioned earlier, it remains semantic. Research proves that websites made with semantic and clean code rank higher in the search engines than those that use deprecated code and that are hard to scan. Even Matt May of the W3C endorses sIFR as an accessible method to create rich typography on the web.

Please keep in mind that sIFR is meant to help the design process and to help pages pop out more. This doesn’t mean creating all your content using sIFR. You don’t want to get overzealous and ruin a web page by using too many type faces. Exercise restraint – think carefully about the design and how you can use sIFR to compliment the page. Headlines, pull quotes, or other small passages of text are good examples. Accent web pages with sIFR, don’t bombard them.

Although Flash is a highly sought after medium for websites these days, it may not be the best for search engine optimization. Think of website text as food for a search engine. Search engines 'feed' on many different things, but the most important thing is the keyword rich content. Flash does not provide text-based content for search engines to spider, thus it needs to be used in moderation and in places which still allow good amounts of content to be seen by the search engine spiders.

However, on July 1st 2008, Adobe announced it is teaming up with search industry leaders (like Google and Yahoo!) to improve the search results of dynamic web content (like Flash) and rich internet applications. This means better indexing by search engines and a higher ranking (hopefully) for most flash websites.

This does not mean, however, that you should go nuts with Flash. From a design perspective, although Flash can give that “wow” factor people want, it still needs to be evaluated for effective website usability. Flash should provide "wow" within the context of the user goals for the website content. For example, our Citrus SEO homepage features a prominent banner for Flash case studies, to drive website visitors deeper into the website content.

My recommendation? Evaluate the use of Flash on a case by case basis to balance your SEO goals, business goals, and user goals for your website.