The term “Flash in the Pan” is one that often refers to a trend that is here one day and gone tomorrow. It’s interesting (and ironic) that Flash-based website design is still around today when it really shouldn’t be. For years now, SEOs have been singing the battle cry that sites should not be Flash based if search engine strength or optimal user-experience is of any value.
Flash is flashy, but it’s nothing if not problematic in a lot of ways. But basing your web design in Flash can pose particularly thorny problems for SEO. These four reasons to avoid the language when designing your website should keep you in good stead if you heed them in your quest for search engine success:
- Flash eats up band width. Flash files, particularly those that use sound, embedded movies and bitmap images, can take forever to load. Page load speed is a very important factor for websites when it comes to providing good user-experience, and of course Google frowns on slow loading sites. Save yourself the headache of trying to figure out why your bounce rate is so high. Just avoid it altogether.
- Many Flash designers disable your browser’s “Back” button through meta refreshers and other techniques. Of course, everyone knows what a Back button is, and the reason is everyone uses it. It’s been called one of the most important navigational elements on the internet. You disable the Back button, and people will close out the browser altogether just to get out of there. Nobody likes to be forced to be anywhere, even online. Add to that the fact that Google AdWords does not approve landing pages with a disabled Back button and you’ve got great reasons to avoid Flash.
- Flash ignores User-experience (UX). Modern website design and SEO strategy is built on a firm foundation of providing a positive user-experience. Flash, however, completely ignores user-experience and offers intrusive popups, auto playing audio and just annoying intros nobody actually logged on to see. They get in the way of your experience. And nothing is more annoying than visiting a website with a flash banner, video or audio file that pops up upon page load when you’re browsing in a library or another public place. Just don’t do it. It’s not worth it.
- Search engines hate Flash. Flash is a thorn in the sides of many search engines. Crawling the pages of websites based in Flash isn’t possible for some. And for others that can, it comes with many errors. When a website is based solely in Flash, search engines are not able to direct visitors to the appropriate page within a Flash file. So there goes the whole user-experience thing.
At the end of the day, all the headaches Flash provides when building a site based on the language just make it not worth the investment. So many other web development solutions exist today that make it easy for you give your visitors a great experience and get your website a great SEO ranking. It’s a language that is quickly fading from view in website design circles as it should be.
If you would like to work with Proctor Digital strategists to help develop a powerful SEO strategy to build targeted website traffic for your site and grow your brand, call us at 773.664.5819. We’d love to help!