Flash

JavaScript, Flash and SEO

If you want people to see your site, minimize the use of JavaScript and Flash. Better yet, avoid them both completely if you can. JavaScript and Flash technology, although possessing the ability to make a site look pretty wild, were not invented to help people find your site, only to hold their attention when they get there. In fact, they pose a disadvantage to you if you decide to rely heavily on them when building your site.

The reasoning is simple. Search engines cannot "spider" the part of a website that is composed of Java or Flash elements. If your homepage greets new visitors with a big Flash intro movie, no matter how spectacular it may be, and your competitor's site welcomes visitors with a plain old HTML page, people are going to be visiting your competitor first pretty much 100% of the time.

...Now comes that old debate - "What good is a website visitor if they don't like what they see?". That's where the whole eMarketing thing comes into play. Many sites use a hybrid approach - they combine many SEO-able elements of their site with the occasional Flash and Java piece when they feel it is necessary to retain the visitor's attention. They key here is to only use Flash or Java when it's absolutely necessary. The more your site incorporates Flash and Java, the more advantage your competitors are going to have over you. Simple as that.

Of course, the internet wouldn't be the internet without impending change. Steps are being made to incorporate SEO into Java and Flash. Although nothing has come of it yet, it's only a matter of time. For now, it's all a matter of what works best for your web visitors. If you're getting hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month to your site regardless, maybe you don't need to worry about the non-compatibility of Flash and Java if it's already in place. On the other hand if you're struggling to get 100 visitors per month maybe it's time to consider making some changes and letting the search engines see what your site is all about.

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