To Flash, Or Not To Flash – Pros And Cons Of Flash Based Websites

One of the biggest consternations among webmasters is whether they should use flash in their webpages or not. To some people, flash can make a webpage look good and appealing in the eyes of the visitors. It can add to the promotional value of the website. However, the most important thing here is that the visitors must be able to reach the website through the search engines or through any other method to appreciate the flash that’s on the page. The biggest problem with using flash is that it can reduce the SEO value of your page. Webmasters seriously think if they should use flash, because if visitors may not reach the site at all, what’s the point in using it?

Let us understand why flash is bad for SEO. When you include flash in your webpage, the search engine is simply going to read these flash chunks as blank areas on your webpage. Flash looks like yawning spaces in your webpages when the search engines read them. This could be a big problem, because the search engines rank content-driven pages. Empty spaces are looked upon with disrespect. Most search engines will not spend time to reread the page or even to go beyond the empty space. Due to this, the page may fall out of the search engine ranking.

But does that mean you should not use flash at all? It could be excellent if you could do it that way, but if you do want to use flash, make sure you spruce up your webpages for their content too. Put the flash code somewhere lower on the page and use as much keyword-optimized content as you can before that. Also use titles and Meta descriptions in the source code.

Making a right blend of content and design is the best for your business website. Keep this in mind when using flash.