Search Engine vs. Flash
Most of us have visited Flash websites that are highly
interactive & look uber-cool. You click on a link
or hover over something and there you go, on a voyage
through space & time. Dazzled & amazed, you arrive
at your target. The only thought in your head...let me
back up and check it out again!
Yes, Flash looks great and it's even practical for some
things too. Let's say you have pictures you want to show
your visitors but fear someone may steal your images.
Well, you're in luck! You can load them into Flash and
create a beautiful interactive gallery making it far
more difficult for the would be image thief to claim
his/her prize and at the same time, offer higher quality
images than would be practical in HTML. You can also
stream music & video through Flash offering better
security to you and higher quality to your visitors.
There's the pros, here come the cons...
Search engines are not entirely Flash friendly. In fact,
some of them can be down right hostile. What I mean by
not "entirely" friendly is this, Google can
index the text within a Flash file as well as follow
most links. The sub-content or additional pages that
appear within the SAME Flash file will not be seen by
the search engines. You also run into problems with text
animation as many effects require the text to be broken
up, rendering the text as graphics and not readable by
search engines. These are definative Flash no-no's that
could put your site's PR(page rank) in the obscure regions.
Be smart about your needs...
If your potential customers will be looking for you
by name (like a band site, actor site, etc.) or something
very specific like that, you can get away with doing
an all Flash site. With some basic optimising on the
main page, the flood gates of animation are thrown wide
open. However, if you're like most of us, competing in
an ever growing, ever changing industry, you're better
off going with HTML. You can, of course, use Flash throughout
your site to make it look nice and increase the quality
of your visitor's experience. Not to mention, it's cheaper.
In summary, you need to determine your specific search
engine vs. Flash balance and build your web site accordingly.
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