Hey, i remember reading that the use of Flash for designing websites is not recommended because it affects search engine ranking. Why is this? Websites created using Flash look very good and it can be a great way (in addition to good content ) to persuade visitors to stay on your site. Any other disadvantages besides search engine ranking?


Also, are there any disadvantages of creating a website using CMS instead of traditional HTML + CSS? For example; does it affect search engine rankings, etc?
(The CMS i'm familiar with is Joomla).

Thanks in advance.

The reason is Flash websites are hard to read because the are mostly graphics and hard for the spiders to read. I think small doses of Flash can be appealing but some people overdo it. I was on a site the other day and got so confused I left. They had too much going on.

Flash is great to enhance certain aspects of your site (for example a lot of the airline sites use them for their route maps.) But I wouldn't create an entire site with it.

Someone posted a link a while back about a site that teaches you how to make a Flash site more search engine friendly but I still wouldn't recommend creating a site in Flash if search engine traffic is your goal.

From what I've read Joomla and other CMS have added certain functions to make them more SEO friendly, but again, nothing is as good as good ole' raw HTML to make sure the engines can read what you have to say.

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There are several ways to make Flash search engine friendly. The main reason they don't get indexed well is that when Google spiders start reading the page (the html) it will get to the <Embed....> tag, which is where the html inserts your .swf or Flash movie, it will basically stop and fail to read the rest of the page.
The first way to help this is to actually insert meta tags into your Flash movie itself. When you open the publish settings for your movie there is a text box for your meta tags, just insert all your keywords into that and the spiders will read them before it gets into your graphics and the movie (or whatever you have in it).

Solution 2: Remember, the flash movie (.swf) actually sits upon a regular html page. Before uploading the page to your server, make sure you open up the code in that page and insert your meta tags and keywords on it. The spiders read this before they even get to your movie. *Make sure your <meta tags are inserted BEFORE your <Embed....> tags. Remember, that's where the spider stops.

Solution 3: If you are using CSS you can actually have the flash movie sitting atop a regular html page - i.e. if your visitor does not have flash installed or the movie doesn't download for one reason or another, they will see a regular html web page. There are tricks involved with doing this but as far as this thread is concerned, think about this aspect of it: As soon as google reads the </style><link href="css/...blah, blah, blah - that's where it goes. If all your tags and keywords are on your css stylesheet, it will read that first before it gets to your movie (Embed...). Remember to have your style tag before the embed.

You can always move your embed tag to the bottom of the code in your page, this is good practice as the spiders will read everything else first.

For those non-coders:
Embed is the html code tag that inserts your movie (.swf) into your page
Meta tags are the keywords for your website
and a spider is what we call the little robots that search your site for google (and all other search engines)

There are more ways but these should get you started. Hope that helps.

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DotComBot.com

I started with nothing and still have most of it...

Thanks for the great explanation DotComBot!

__________________
Don't put the cart before the horse.
Plan your website, then create it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recent Blog Posts...

Most Bloggers are Poor Marketers
Make Money as a YouTube Partner
Don't Discount Amazon's Affiliate Program

Here. here.

I like flash technology to a certain extent because it takes dymanic web pages to another level. There are challenges to flash for search engines too, but as DotBotCom has demonstrated, there are ways around it.

I think flash in combination with HTML/CSS is better especially for usability reasons than a site totally built in flash.