Flash, SEO and optimization-how to use Flash correctly on your website

Flash, SEO and optimization-how to correctly use Flash on your website

Flash movies are a good thing. They help attract people who are bored with static pages, and they can help tell a better story than plain text. However, the use of flash must be compatible with the ability to rank in search engines. This article describes some precautions and suggestions when using flash on the website.

This is what Disney did. Oprah is too. Even my favorite pizza restaurant will do this. This is to embed their main navigation and important content in a flash movie. In fact, in all these cases, a good part of the website’s homepage is flash, which makes it invisible to search engine crawlers.

It is true that these are extreme cases of websites that use flash, but there are some cases where even a little flash may be used improperly. In some cases, flash is not only suitable, but also recommended. The question becomes how to best use flash without affecting search engine rankings.

Just like the early settlers of the Wild West, we are the pioneers (and women) of a new community, this new community is the World Wide Web community (note the WWW analogy), this community was born in the past few decades, and in the past 10 Experienced its growth around the year.

During this time, there are many ways to display a website and its content. Some people are more successful than others. However, there is one aspect of website development that has caused a heated debate between the website designer and the person who locates the website. This is the purpose of the flash.

Flash has been around for a while, and although it is beautiful (because there is no better word), it will seriously hinder the site’s ability to locate in search engines. This is because most search crawlers cannot see or effectively index flash or its content. Therefore, any content contained in flash, including page content or more important site navigation, is invisible to them.

However, flash also has its advantages. As I mentioned above, it can turn an otherwise dull website into a unique and refreshing thing. So the question becomes-how to balance the need for search engine indexability and the need to impress customers?

Well, there is a rule of thumb here-less is better.

The less flash that occupies the page, the better, and at the same time embed as little content as possible. In addition, when flash appears on the page, it may affect its ability to deliver expected messages.

Let’s do a quick survey-how many of you come to a website, will bring up 1/5 of the top of the page, or even a few inches on the right side of the page-especially when you see flickering or When moving?

As I suspected, most of you. I do the same. We do this because these places are where we usually see banner ads, so we associate ad space on many websites with ads and exclude them.

However, in some cases, the website will place important information in these locations via flash. However, if many people ignore these locations, they also ignore this important information. So here is the reason why flash does not perform well on the page.

So here is a suggestion: don’t put your flash in places that will be overlooked-that is, those places on pages that are usually related to advertisements.

My second flash tip-don’t take up most of the screen. Keep the real estate of the screen smaller than half of the screen, preferably on the left. There are many reasons:

Many times, when people point their direction to the page, their eyes scan the page and stay on the page for a few seconds, and then stare at the upper left corner of the page. If you have a flash movie running (especially if it is not controlled), they will miss the message for a few seconds. We all know the benefits of incomplete information?

Another reason for reducing flash memory usage is that although more and more people use broadband every day, nearly half of them still use dial-up Internet access. This means that everything takes longer to load. If these users are waiting for the flash movie to load, they may leave your website in frustration because the page takes too long to load.

Some other suggestions:

Don’t use flash to tell the story, use it to reinforce the story. If you want to sell a product, leave important information in the HTML of the page, but use flash to emphasize the product. Either show it or point out its benefits. Your flash should be complementary, not too overwhelming.

Finally, did you know that you can also externalize the code needed to display the flash? This helps improve the scalability of the page.

Using a technique similar to the one I described in the externalizingjavascript article, you can externalize the code used to render the flash. You can use the same code used when creating the drop-down box with JavaScript to externalize the flash code (use the document.write code and embed the HTML required to display the flash).

As you can see, based on this article, flash is not that bad, as long as it is used properly. This means it should not be too powerful or occupy too many pages. It should be a supplement to the information that the webpage intends to convey, and it should be located where people will see it, not where it is usually associated with advertising. If you follow these simple rules, your flash can become an important selling point for your website. It can provide your customers with the little push they need from the browser to the buyer.