The question is often raised during meetings with managers and business top dogs: Is it alright to have a flash animated web site? How do we use Adobe Flash properly to build a web site?
Just to give everyone an overview of what exactly Flash does. Flash is a software which enable web creators to add in interactive components to their sites, such as animation and graphics. It is used extensively in demonstrating products and training programs. If you choose to build your web site completely out of Flash, there is however the possibility, that Google would not be able to ‘index’ these sites and listing them way below the normal HTML sites.
What is the meaning of ‘index’? When you can left-click the text on a web site and see it highlighted in blue after dragging over it, the content is classified as ‘indexable’. This is to say that the highlighted text and images or graphics of the site are located in various ‘layers’. Only then can the text-based content be indexed by search engines, such as Google.
With the help of indexing, Google can review a web page thoroughly and put the important details of the page into the database for users’ keyword searching. It is really difficult for Google to index Flash websites as they are layered into graphics and photos which cannot be indexed.
In the old days, it is completely impossible for Google to index content written using Flash. Although there are news saying that Google and Adobe are working towards the goal of making content written using Flash more indexable, there are no test results on whether the attempt is successful or not. Therefore, it is of your best interest to incorporate text-based content in your website and avoid using Flash to create your entire web page.
It is indeed undeniable that Flash is one of the best design tools when it comes down to the appearance of a website. It is also user-friendly in many ways. What we cannot change is that Google still has problems reading Flash contents and this is obstructive for the search engine to work optimally.
There are business owners who decide to go both ways, just in case. These web pages let users choose between ‘HTML Site’ or ‘Flash Web Site’ from the Home Page. Naturally, that is one of the ways to compromise with Google’s system, but the workload of managing two web sites at the same time can be unbearable for some of the business owners and their teams.
So how to use Flash within web pages properly? You should develop a compromise between web design, usefulness and search engine optimization. The best way is to integrate Flash files within the entire HTML site design. Then your text-based content can be indexed by Google. On the other hand, your Flash-based content can attract visitors to your site. This can tackle the problem of indexing and make good use of Flash at the same time.
Tags: Adobe, Application, business, C#, computer, computers, Flash, Game, Image rotators, Microsoft, Samples, Silverlight, software, technology, web 2.0