Business Articles

Many business owners when starting to think about having a web site for their business made starting searching the internet for web site designs they like. Often at least some of the sites that they like will be all Flash sites.

Flash sites look great! No doubt about it. And Flash design is great for developers because usually you can just drag-n-drop graphics, etc. into Flash and produce great looking results very easily.

But...before jumping at the first developer who is going to create a site for your business in all Flash, please make sure you know what you are getting into. Although the all Flash design could look fantasic (depending on the skill of the developer), your site will likely have very few visitors. The reason is because most web site traffic comes from search engines, and Flash is just NOT search engine friendly.

Let's say that on your web site you sell widgets. People looking for widgets will use a seach engine like Google, or Yahoo and type "widget", or "buy widgets" to find web sites selling...you guessed it...widgets. However, it is very unlikely your web site will show up anywhere on the results page (called "SERP" for search engine result page), more or less in the top ten results because those search engines couldn't find the widget "keyword" on your web site because it was done in all Flash.

Here's why...search engines periodically go around to all the web sites they know about (you have to be listed with a search engine first) and try to "read" the text content of all the pages they find (this is called "indexing"). For normal webpages written in HTML the search engines can easily extract keywords right from the text content of the page. But when a search engine visits an all Flash site, what they see is something like..."<object classid='clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000' codebase='http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/p..."

There's the difference between an html web site, and an all Flash web site right there! HTML is text (which search engines can easily read), and Flash is not. All the content of an all Flash web site is locked up inside a Flash "object" which search engine just don't read!

After all this you may think Flash is bad, and be should be avoided like the plague. This is not true. The problem is with "all Flash" sites, or with potentally "indexable" content being locked up in a Flash object. You want a great looking banner...consider Flash. You want some multimedia elements like video, or music...consider Flash. But, if you have some information about your widgets you want your customers to know about...avoid Flash.

In order to create a great looking business web site, and be respectful of the search engines seek a competent web design firm that knows when to use Flash, and when not to. A properly designed web site using html, cascading style sheets (css) and javascript can look every bit as "Flashy" as a Flash site AND can still be easily readable by the search engines!

I know, I know you're thinking..."What!!? You're crazy! Too much SEO?' There's no such thing as too much search engine optimization!!!" Just bare with me a second and you'll see why :)

Being at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) is every web site owner's dream. Being number one gets your web site tons of traffic, which should in turn bring in tons of cash. Ahhhh...it's good to be king! But there is a downside to getting too good, too fast...the infamous "sandbox!"

Web pages are usually ranked according to how many links to that site/page are coming from other external web sites. The rank of the external site is also a factor with more highly ranked sites carrying more weight. The higher ranked a web page is for any given keyword, the higher up in the SERP that web page appears. You say..."yeah, yeah! That what I want. I wanna be king!"

But wait! Search engines just plain expect web sites to slowly, and over time gather more and more incoming links, and therefore ranking. If a brand new domain name shoots up to number one over-night the search engines see red-flags. They think you are up to something funny and are cheating their well-thought up system for page ranking because gaining that much page rank, that quickly just shouldn't happen. When they see this, they can put you in the "sandbox."

Being in the sandbox means that after you really pushed your web site hard, got tons of incoming links, and went right up to the top of the SERPs...now you're in the sandbox and your web page is hovering somewhere around the 10zillionth result. Not good!

It is as if they arbitrarily decide..."hmmm...this web page right here shot up in the results really fast. Let's mess with them and move them to the bottom." I know it seems unfair, and contrary to think that a web page could be penalized for being too good. But search engines can and have done this! Eventually you can get out of the sandbox. But this can take months, or even up to a year so you reeeeally don't want to get sent to sandbox...ever!

Now one way to not put in the sandbox is to build your incoming links aggressively, but not too aggressively. In any given week submit your site to a few free directories, write a few articles for other sites (with an embedded link to your site of coarse), make posts on a few forums, even consider buying a few quality links from other "authority web sites." Just don't go crazy...spread it out a bit.

Another way to avoid the sandbox (which in my opinion could be the best way) is to buy an older domain name. Yup, people can and do let their domain names expire after they've had them for years, and you can pick up these expired domain names and use them for your web page. By doing this you stand a much better chance of avoiding the sandbox, while at the same time being able to aggressively market your web site and therefore rank higher the SERPs!

If this option sounds good for you, check out Whois.net. They have a "search through deleted domains" tools where you can find domains which were registered at one time, but are now expired. Since these domains were registered at one time, you know they are at least one year old (since registration lasts a year minimum) and are therefore excellent candidates for your aggressive marketing campaign. Just choose a good domain name that fits your site and market away!

Or if this sounds like too much work for you to undertake yourself, find a competent web designer who can handle the details in setting this up!

Note: this article applys mostly to brand new web site domain names (web sites with older domain names may have more leeway).