Posted by BlueSEO on February 3rd, 2010

When you are building your website with search engine optimization in mind one of the big questions involves what type of foundation you will use for the design. Conventional wisdom says that flash is SEO suicide, but that isn’t true anymore.

To understand how flash and website optimization work together it’s important to know what flash is. Flash is actually a language used to create computer animation. When used on web pages you can create interesting pages with moving parts. Flash pages sometimes have long load times and you need a flash player to use them, but they do look professional.

The problem with flash and website optimization is that most search engines can’t see the flash programming to be able to identify keywords used when ranking pages for website optimization. At least this used to be true. However, it is possible to create flash website optimization pages, however it isn’t easy. There are certain coding tricks that can be placed within the flash language that make it searchable in the major engines. Not all web design companies are able to do this. In fact, many website optimization companies will refuse to even use flash because it is so much more difficult. If you are interested in a Flash based site you will need to find a web design company that specializes in Flash website optimization.

However, if you want to have flash on your website it is worth it to make it SEO friendly. It will give you the best of both worlds; increased page rank and a great looking website.