FLASH and SEO

I get a lot of questions about FLASH and how it fits into, or doesn't fit into, search engine friendly sites. Here's my .02 cents worth (and the truth!).

1) Search engines DO NOT see FLASH code. So anything at your website that uses FLASH, will not be indexed or crawled by a search engine spider.

This means:

Menus
Navigation
All FLASH "Enter Here" Pages (the KISS of death, trust me..)
Anything... that is created using FLASH

Does this mean if your site is ALL FLASH search engines won't see it and be able to index it?

YES

Does this mean your ALL FLASH website doesn't have a chance of being top ranked at Google, Yahoo!, or MSN?

YES

Does this mean your ALL FLASH website will be harder for brides to find?

YES

Does this mean your FLASH navigation system is invisible to search engine spiders and therefore they can't follow and index those pages?

YES

Are there workarounds to an all FLASH site that I can use to solve this problem?

NO

Are there workarounds that I can use if I use some FLASH to get the FLASH elements of my website indexed and ranked?

NO. If it's FLASH... it doensn't get indexed, plain and simple.

Can I use some FLASH on my home page (or web pages)?

SURE, as long as you don't mind that ANYTHING in FLASH will not be crawled and therefore stands little or no chance of being indexed or ranked well at Google, Yahoo!, or MSN.

I've heard there are things you can do to fix this problem and that FLASH isn't that bad?

Oh yes, and I heard the moon is made out of cheese, too.

Any of your competitors, who create easy to crawl, well optimized pages, without FLASH, and using a full suite of search engine optimization techniques, both on-page and off-page, is going to beat you - and their website will be easier for brides to find at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for any competitive keyword/phrase.