WHY IS MY WEBSITE INVISIBLE?
September 13th, 2007 | by genesower |
In our earlier discussion “IS YOUR WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY?” we talked about making sure your website had the proper configuration of META tags so that your site could be indexed properly.
But one of the most common reasons we find for “invisible” sites are sites that are almost completely created in Flash, which is a graphic programming language used for encoding video, creating animations, special effects, slide shows, presentations, etc.
Flash, developed by Adobe, is a great program, don’t get me wrong. But to build an entire webpage using Flash is a big mistake and here’s why:
Flash is invisible to the search engines! When a search engine spider visits a page comprised entirely of Flash it’s basically seeing a blank page. Nothing, Zip. Zich. Nada.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN crave TEXT and basic HTML. This is assuming, of course, that you care about getting traffic to your website. Because if you don’t then be my guest — Flash-away!
But if you want the razzle-dazzle of Flash while actually enjoying search engine traffic, consider using Flash as an accent—a spice to be used strategically within your site. Not the main course.
I’ve found that some design firms who came out of the print arena are particularly guilty of overusing Flash because it’s “cool”. Great. When you have your cool site all to yourself and hardly any visitors, it’s probably time to tame the Flash designs to their rightful role — a supporting one.
