I’ve had more conversations with people about the benefits and drawbacks of flash technology than you could imagine.
Flash, put simply, is a multimedia platform in use by many websites to help create a more interactive and visually appealing site. Flash can be used to present photos or pictures, movies or videos, and even designed animation. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t witnessed flash in action. It’s definitely a great tool to help grab people’s attention, but it doesn’t do much for helping your site gain higher rankings; in fact, it can often hurt your search rankings.
To give you a brief background, search engines rank websites partly due to the thematic and textual content and relevancy of the site relative to the keywords the site is competing for.
For example, a site that is based around mountain climbing is going to rank nearly as well for a keyword like “mountain bikes” as a site that talks about bike repairs is. The reason for this is content – the bike repair site is naturally going to have much more related material to mountain bikes than a site about mountain climbing, despite the fact that the word “mountain” is common with the keyword.
So what does this have to do with Flash? Not a whole lot, but that briefing was necessary to what comes next.
If you’re considering designing or revamping your website, please, PLEASE consult an SEO professional. You’ll be wasting both time and money not doing so, even though it might seem like a much cheaper alternative at the time. Chances are you’ll just have another site caught within a web of millions of other sites all vying for the same keywords. When I talk to clients, the tendency is for them to want sharp, crisp and catchy looking sites – the funky, modern looking presentations. However, when asked what sites they’ve seen in the past that they like, it’s all too common that they reference 100% or nearly-100% flash sites…which is not a problem if you don’t mind the fact that nobody will ever see it!
In short, all or nearly-all Flash sites are not “spiderable” by Search Engines like Google. This means that search engines cannot see what the site is about – the portion of the site composed in Flash is like a big, blank page to them. So, when they place your site for ranking, you’ll be all the way at the bottom. You need to have a large part of your site created in non-Flash elements. The more relevant HTML, the better. Of course, a Flash hybrid site (a site incorporating small elements of Flash, used as a supplement) is just fine. In fact, our homepage is a Flash hybrid site – our main movie banner is composed in Flash.
So now you know that Flash isn’t evil – it’s just a page element you need to limit yourself to if you’re serious about rankings. Next time you see a site you might want to mimic the look of, let me know and I’ll give you a head’s up on what would help and hurt your rankings. In fact, feel free to post sites in the comments below and I’ll reply with some feedback!