Flash: Drink Responsibly
Ahhhh Adobe Flash. A tasty beverage that provides eye candy to your website, but can be equally poisonous if you overdose.
Too often I see websites (and website templates) that are pure flash, with little or no html content. Most of these sites have beautiful motion between ‘pages’ and look exactly the same on every web browser. What’s not to love? To the normal human, flash is great. To the search engines, however, flash can be a real nightmare.
I’ve had some clients request a site created entirely in flash, only to come back months later and ask me to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on their site because it’s not getting enough hits. It is at this exact time that I fear the most. That is, the task of informing the client that their website is in no way search engine friendly.
This is where Designers and Developers go their separate ways.
Designers:
To the average designer, flash is a Godsend. It allows them to create a whole website with limited or no traditional web programming. It allows them to use fonts that normally cannot be seen in standard websites. Flash literally is a blank canvas with few (if any) limitations. It allows them to create a website that otherwise may not be replicable in the traditional sense. Designers love the ability to break outside the box of standard web design.
Developers:
To the average developer, flash is a great tool, but not the ‘end all, be all’. Developers treat flash files much like image files or photos. Great for a spritz of style, but bad if used to paint the whole page. This is because most search engines cannot read, or see any content housed inside a flash file. Google is one exception. Google can currently crawl certain types of text in flash, but it’s still in it’s testing stages.
So you may ask, “How can Coca-Cola get away with a full flash website and I cannot?” Simple. Coke doesn’t need to advertise like most businesses do. Most people in the world already know what Coke is. In essence, Coke doesn’t need to worry about search engine optimization, because everyone knows about them already.
Have you ever wondered how Google sees your website? It surely doesn’t have eyes like a human being, but it still sees it. Try this on for size.
(1) Goto http://www.christinemeeker.com/index2.php
Notice the site is pure flash. To the human eye it looks fantastic.
(2) This is how Google sees the same page. CLICK HERE
If you didn’t know better, would you be able to tell what kind of website that was. Is it a business, or a rock band’s website? Google doesn’t know either.
At Trifox Designs we create custom websites that not only utilizes Flash’s beauty but also takes SEO into account. If you would like a quote on redesigning your current flash site to be SEO compliant, fill out our Quote Request Form.
Until then, Drink Flash Responsibly.