1.800.481.0031 
| Flash and SEO |
|
Using Flash on your Web site is a great way to offer visitors an enhanced experience. It is also very useful to convey a complex or multi layered idea using a simple straightforward video or sequence of images. The problem that most Webmasters encounter when using Flash is that search engine bots and spiders, those little entities that survey Web pages and pick the most relevant ones for top results on major search engines, rely heavily on text to understand what your site is all about. They ignore Flash. Most bots can’t handle Flash, so if your Web site is made up primarily of videos, it may fail at being visible to search engines even if it is relevant and well constructed. It is important to note that certain Internet browsers also prevent Flash from running properly for your visitors. Ever see that little pop-up tool tip asking you to “Click to activate and use this control”? It’s annoying to you, and it’s annoying to them. This is why understanding Flash is key to making your website attractive to your traffic as well as the bots you need to rank your site. Excellent Flash animation with proper text descriptions can make or break your ranking. There are ways to bypass both problems, but most Content Management Systems (CMS), even Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly ones, have a hard time fixing them properly. In order to do that, you need some serious HTML knowledge or expertise. Fortunately, we’re full of that here at Creative Systems. Our web-savvy programmers will have you running SEO friendly Flash in no time, and will even teach you how to do it yourself. In a nutshell, you’ll need to embed your Flash additions with HTML. This allows users to see your Flash content while allowing bots and spiders to read your text. This can be a bit tricky, because if your text isn’t a faithful rendition of your Flash content, the little search engine bugs might decide that your Web site’s core content is some sort of cloaking device. This, of course, puts you at the bottom of the search results list, and then all your hard work was for naught. That's why companies like McDonald's and AOL use us, to save money and increase traffic. Hope these tips help, but for assured performance, contact us and we'll handle all your outsourcing needs. Take my advice: if you’re not confident that you can do this one right, ask for help. We’ll be more than happy to oblige. Until next time, This is the Outsourcing Guru signing off. |