Flash Design and SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Have you ever seen a flash web site? I am sure you have. You just may not have known that is was Flash®. What is "flash"?

Flash® is a highly graphical, can be interactive, colorful, visual style of web site design. The most popular format to create flash is Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional. To view an example of a flash web design visit: MissionImpossible.com. The entire web site is built with flash, from the embedded graphics, sound, and video to the contact forms and in the Mission Impossible II version they had a graphical (flash based) interactive game.

In the early days of the Internet, Flash began making its mark because you could start to make a web site more visually appealing and interactive. It was easier than using standard HTML I or HTML II. Since most people on the internet were running on 33 k modems and eventually 56 k modems - graphics took forever to download and many people didn't want to wait. However, designers still understood that people are visual people and we like a good graphic. So, Adobe Corporation - famous for their photoshop editing and news and magazine layout programs designed a program that you could embed graphic and animate vector based graphics along with sound - and save them in a format that was smaller than standard graphics.

The only other solution at that time was to make graphics small enough so that no matter what you had on a web page it would only take one minute or less to download. Otherwise you might lose your perspective customer to a faster (even perhaps uglier) web site.

As internet speeds increased the size and amount of graphics has increased. Now, a Flash web site is basically not a problem to load as are most graphically based web sites. Five minute waits for web sites to appear is virtually unheard of and now - if it isn't their in 30 seconds or less - loaded with bells and whistles - we move on.

Here are two Examples of Flash Templates:

1. Chameleon
2. Auto Online

As a web developer and internet marketer for over 12 years I have seen many changes come and go on the internet. Text, graphics, flash, back to text, graphics some flash - css, php, html, xml and rss. Things have moved and are continually moving extremely fast in this relatively new world of internet technology.

Out of all of the changes - I have often reminded my clients that one thing has remained the same: if you are not seen on the internet - if nobody can find you - you might as well not be on the internet.

That is why search engine optimization is vital to every web design that is posted on the internet.

Search Engine Optimization is vitally important to the success of a web site. With over 8 billion web pages on the Internet and the number growing every day - making sure that your web site is seen is a "must" not an option.

Flash in limited quantities

I'm not saying not to use Flash in your web site. It can enhance parts of it and add an interactive flare that you can not achieve any other way. A three quarter (400 pixel by 250 pixel) corner is perfect for adding that special touch. However, what I do believe is - you should not build your entire site with Flash unless you have thousands of extra dollars, and perhaps more, to spend on hard copy advertising as well - because there is no other way you are going to effectively optimize your web site for high rankings.

Search Engines don't like Flash

More to the point - search engines don't SEE Flash! They skip over it as they roam the Internet looking for web pages with content to log into their massive databases.

Don't get me wrong. I have been on news sites that have rotating flash photo galleries, and on-the-fly embedded news articles which enhance the site greatly. But the Flash element is maybe one-tenth of the whole picture - not the entire picture.

So, if you want to have a web site that ranks well, can be optimized for search engines the way search engines want to see things - then a flash web site is definitely out of the question, or at least use it sparingly.