Today, a lot of websites employ flash animation products from companies like Adobe. Basically flash animation gives webmasters the ability to include small animated vectors into their web pages.
Of course, these animations have some influence on the way your site is "seen" and indexed by the search engines. The problem of Flash Search Engine Optimization arises, which is a very serious matter in terms of conversion and web site profitability.
What Are Flash Animations?
When you create an animation, you get a file, named, for example, banner.fla. The ".fla" represents the Flash format extension. In order to display this file in a web page, you need to export it in Shockwave Format (extension .swf). It is this file, once exported, that you will be using for your web site.
If the Flash components you have created contains text, it won't be taken into account by most of the search engines, as they don't pay much attention to this format. Still, there are search engines (e.g. Google, dir.com, FAST Search) that know how to read the text inserted in the Flash animations. A web page (or even a site!) that is built entirely in Flash will therefore pass almost "unseen" by search engines, which index, almost exclusively, text content in HTML format. Nevertheless, the HTML file that launches the Flash animation will be crawled by search engine's spiders.
Why Use Flash for Sites?
It is not a secret for anyone that search engines don't really like sites that are built using Flash exclusively. These sites rarely contain enough relevant text to allow a good indexing. Above that, not all spiders can read the content of a .swf file. Flash is used though every now and then for mini-sites or for campaign sites.
Here are a couple of reasons people find Flash worth the effort.
It maximizes the animation's impact, which is appreciated in the Internet interactive and visual environment.
Flash combines well with other technologies like php, mysql, xml, video, sound etc. This makes it possible to include flash in a completely dynamic website.
Pros

More content can be added to a smaller sized space without undue compromise of the layout.
It is an easier way to present slide shows or Flash components.
It is a great tool to create banners and ads, and even Flash videos.
For creating visual impact and drawing the eye to specific points of interest on a website Flash is the tool of choice.
Cons
Sites utilizing flash could take some time to load and it increases bandwidth consumption.
Most search engines don't like and don't index Flash.
You could be at the mercy of the Flash developers - if you use 3rd party Flash developers, they might code the project so that you won't be able to make any changes and you will have to pay them for modifications
The "Back" button is usually disabled for flash websites and also Google's AdWords won't approve pages that have the Back button disabled. So, beware of this if you intend to promote your web site by using a PPC campaign.
Flash may interrupt the visitor's experience on the site. For instance, never ending movies and sounds without volume control may drive some site visitors away.
Splash Pages don't favor your visibility - they lack the text that contains the keywords identified as pertinent to your services / products.
It is not an easy task to optimize flash for the unpredictable search engines. The amount of time and energy it takes for SEO for Flash websites is far greater than the efforts required for an HTML site.

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