How Flash can have a Negative Impact on your Website
When talking to business owners or anyone who wishes to build a website, the first thing they ask me is “Can you build it in flash?” and that this point I want to run for the hills. The problem is that even though flash can be a great tool to enhance your website it should by no means be your primary authoring tool. At this point the search engines cannot index anything embedded in flash. This can cause many problems when you develop key parts of your website in flash. These key items would include but are not limited to Main body copy and primary navigation.
If the search engines cannot follow the links to other pages of your website or can’t see any the content you provide on your website how can they effectively understand what keywords and key phrases you’re targeting? The answer is they can’t, which will ultimately hurt your visibility within search engines. I am not one of those people who will protest any use of flash and believe me I know a couple people who would love to start a protest about the use of flash. I will not mention any names but you know who you are.
What I am suggesting is be smart about the use of flash and you will go far. Remember the search engines can’t see flash so keep key elements out to ensure maximum crawl ability and index ability. If you find yourself questioning if something should be put in flash just follow this saying, When in doubt, take it out!
