Flash Seo

There are now a myriad of platforms, applications and programs used in making our website templates dynamic. In addition to plain old HTML there are also CSS(Cascading Style Sheets), SSI(Server Side Includes) and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) just to name a few. In addition Flash animation is also used to accentuate the elegance of our Flash site templates. Making the decision to use our template customization services will definitely save you a lot of cost and effort however there is one other thing you’ll want to consider. And that is, which customization package should you choose? In other words should you go for a Flash based Website or is it more practical to stay with HTML? In the following article the author examines some of the pros and cons of using Flash vs HTML. For a more in-depth discussion on this particular matter see also - Top 10 things Flash developers don’t want you to hear

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Adobe compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity
Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site
With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization
If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time
Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

About the Author
About Design9x.com
With extensive experience Design9x a leading Professional Web Design Studio delivering high Quality and Affordable Web-based Solutions. Design9x specialize in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet Marketing Website Development and Consulting to increase Traf

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In a previous post, Top 10 Things Flash Developers Don’t Want You to Hear“, I discussed a number of reasons why I thought it might be wise to reconsider the whole idea of having an all Flash website. One of my biggest concerns had to do with Flash inhibiting Google’s ability to crawl the content. While I have never argued the possibility of making Flash content search engine friendly I do appose the notion that this is some how not even a problem nor that meeting all of these extra hurtles is worth the amount of time and extra money you’ll spend on optimizing Flash sites the right way vs plain old HTML. Notwithstanding in this article we will discuss a number of cases where it is actually practical to utilize this technology.

Article: When Use Flash? The following question is the sorest and the most disputable as for the usage of Flash. So, let us discuss how this technology is applicable for creating Flash sites. At first we have to define the purposes of a site, because they are to determine the choice of technology for creating the site. If your site is intended for selling some product or service, especially, if competition is intense, creating a Flash site is not cost-effective.

This is due to that reason that Flash is not indexed in full by search engines, that is why it will be just impossible or it will cost big money to make these sites occupy the first positions by specific keywords. In such a case an html site is much better suited. Therefore, a Flash Internet shop selling lots of various products is nonsense and rival non-Flash sites with correct search engine optimization will easily overcome regarding the traffic and hence regarding the volume of sales.

Of course, there are Flash Internet shops which function effectively, but most often these are the shops selling specialized products and belonging to large and well-known companies, which do not need heavy advertising. For instance, there is the site adobe.com, which has the like narrow specialization of its products, and those who use their products, as a matter of fact, already know where to buy them.

There is one more type of sites, which offer users a specific product; these are promo-sites (sites designed to present some concrete product or service). There both Flash and html can be used. Again everything depends on the purposes. Let us assume that we want to advertise a new brand of a cellular telephone and we want to do it extremely elegantly. In such a case we need a Flash site, but only on condition that our Flash promo-site will have visitors, but they are evidently not going to come to us from search engines. That is why users are often stimulated to visit a promo-site from producers’ websites or by means of advertising.

This type of sites has a small life-cycle, because they are most often created to demonstrate new features of a definite product. Since new models are continually being created, the old promo websites lose their significance, that is why a website must get its visitors as much as possible interested. This can be achieved most impressively by creating a Flash promo website.

The following type of sites is a forum. The situation with forums is very similar to the situation with internet shops. If a forum does not belong to the company producing a specific product (such forums are very scarce) or it is not created for a very limited number of individuals, but created to attract as many people as possible, there is no need to create a Flash forum. This also concerns blogs.

I am not going to divide websites into groups, I will just do their very brief survey and say from my personal point of view where else it is appropriate to use Flash:

* Chats, because chats are often tied to definite resources and they do not need any additional promotion, and if it is an avatar chat, using Flash is the most suitable choice.
* Galleries, if this gallery belongs to one definite artist, has a small amount of text information and directed at a select circle of users.
* Business card site usually has minimum information content, most often there are the address of the company, contact information (telephone number) and some general information about the activities of the company, that is why original decoration made using Flash will be quite to the point.
* Online portfolio, because this will give an opportunity to make its appearance very bright and make it more dynamic and interesting.
* Guestbooks can also be made with the help of Flash.

I have listed the main things, but there are many more hybrid websites, which combine in themselves various features. The major point to be taken into consideration here is the following: if you want to attract a lot visitors to your resources (especially if your website is developed for selling some products or services) sparing the expenses or completely avoiding them, it is better to make such websites without using Flash or using Flash partially (use html for all text information and Flash for some elements).

Anyway, whatever your website’s purpose is - portfolio, gallery, business website, ecommerce shop, etc. - it is not necessary to order custom web design and hire a flash programmer. There are much simpler and modern solutions nowadays. I am talking about Flash Templates and Flash CMS templates. They are pre-made Flash web pages that require making additional changes to suit your needs and preferences. As a rule, flash web templates are easy-to-use, suitable both for newbies and professionals, and allow launching a website in no time. I recommend a large gallery of Flash web templates at FlashMint.

About the Author
Trenty Fox - Marketing Assistant at FlashMint.com. FlashMint is a leader in an industry which offers Flash Web Templates with high-grade graphics, thought-out structure, remarkable flash and sound effects.

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As it gets harder and harder to attract new customers and keep their interest. More and more designers and clients alike turn to Flash website templates in attempt to deal with the incursion of the short attention span generation. With bandwidth no longer an issue and armed with a powerful arsenal of rich media many say Flash is already perched and ready to become the industries weapon of choice.

Even so, those of us who may be closer to finding our inner geek (you know who your are) will be more familiar with the technical issues that surround Flash hence we may appear a little less (pardon the pun) “animated” by all that fancy schmancy. Granted, for every obstacle, and every shortcoming Flash may have had, still has, whatever the case may be, Flash still possess and promises to continue to bring some really amazing virtues to the table. But, there is no justifiable reason that dazzling special effect should ever take the place of good clean HTML content on a website, notwithstanding the majority of Flash antagonist become so, due to the many inaccuracies and misconceptions floating around all over the Net concerning Flash.

Misconception number one - ( The Flash SEO scandal )
The most widely spread misconception is search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine visibility as it pertains to Flash website templates. Sorry to burst your bubble but getting your site indexed on any search engine isn’t easy whatever the underlining technology; search engines are primarily design to index static pages while on the contrary Flash is inherently dynamic. The question then arises. Is the use of Flash website templates then present an insurmountable obstacles or irremediable technical issue to bar proper indexing of these pages. And, if so how is the use of other programming techniques such as dynamically driven database sites and complex URLs (a common practice also facing similar challenges) become such common place or differ when it all comes down to search engine ranking? The answer to these questions must necessarily come from the search engines themselves and the information they provide concerning dynamic Flash sites and complex URLs. See Google Webmaster Help Center answers to Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash? - Does Google index dynamic pages?

What are Complex URLs?
Generally complex URLs read as follows http://foamers.net/sample.php?type=flash&details=gallery. Pages or links used to access this kind of URLs are dynamic, meaning that the content of the page can vary based on the value of the data being passed to the script (script in this case refers to sample.php) creating the page. Notice the parameters (also called a query string) being passed as name=value pairs to this script beginning at the question mark (?) each pair is also separated by an ampersands (&). The script then parses these values to determined which content (or page) it should serve; if on the other hand the topic parameter were to change one could expect to see an entirely different page. As you might imagine these types of URLs could confuse or even momentarily trap the spider by looking as if there were an infinite number of pages within just the one site. Needless to say, me Google crawler no like.

Notwithstanding dynamic pages such as these are simply too useful to avoid. Moreover there are many simple ways to amend the dynamic URLs potential issue, such as through the use of https rewrites and the like… Likewise Flash interactivity is simply too functional to ignore, and any thing else you need to do to make your Flash website template more amicable for the search engine bots to traverse is well worth the extra effort. Why? Well, for starters Flash is capable of utilizing sever-side scripts, it can also be used to assure client-side data validation, make interactive games, embed movies, music and lots of other cool stuff… Listen, it’s perfectly natural to feel a little uncomfortable and even afraid around anything you may not easy get right away; but that’s no reason to call it evil. Case in point Google uses Flash to display users video search results, better still; the popular YouTube website which uses Flash to play movies uploaded by users.

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