While an all-flash website can deliver the visual impact that an html website may lack, understand that flash websites do not get indexed well by search engines, and cannot be viewed on iPhone or iPad devices. If you rely solely on search engines to drive web traffic you should avoid having an all flash content. If you must have flash content on your webpage, then consider just having a dash of flash. By that I mean you should consider having a combination programming languages on the same page. For instance, it is better for organic SEO to combine html and flash on the same page as oppose to all flash content. When you combine the two languages to create a webpage the flash content will help to deliver the visual element that you require, while the html content will allow for search engines to properly index your webpage. Here is an example of a site that combines flash and html freelance web designer.
Due to search engines not being able to index flash content well it is important that you do not use flash for your navigation. The reason is quite obvious because if search engines cannot read the navigation properly then it nay not be able to spider and index the linking pages. Moreover, it is better to use text links, because text links have the descriptive property that is very valuable in organic SEO. If for some reasons you must use flash for your navigation there are ways to compensate for the inherent drawback of flash navigation,. Start by creating an XML sitemap and submit it to various search engines, this will inform the search engines of all the pages in your website that require indexing. As a matter of fact, every website should have an XML sitemap. There are many XML sitemap creation websites and free offline software that you can use to generate XML sitemap. Also, create an alternative navigation structure for your webpage in text link format and place it in the non-flash area of your webpage. Alternative text link navigation is ideal for any website that uses flash or image link for navigation. Like flash, image links have limited potential for organic SEO. Here is an example of a website that uses flash for navigation, but also uses text link navigation at the bottom of the page: Freelance SEO.
In summary, avoid flash when you can and if you must use flash don’t hurt your organic SEO potential by going all-flash. You should keep in mind that (non-jail broken) iPhone and iPad users cannot view your website. Don’t use flash for navigation and if you do you should augment your webpage with text navigation to assist search engines to spider your site effectively. Finally, make use of an XML sitemap, because it instructs search engine which page to index and how often to index. XML sitemap is especially useful when you add additional pages to your website, because the XML sitemap can instantly inform search engines of the new pages, whereas waiting for search engine to naturally find the new page from spidering is inefficient.
