Friday, May 15, 2009

SEO, Flash, and AJAX. How can they work together?

Effective design and SEO are both contributors to the success of an effective website. However two effective design means, Flash and AJAX, both conflict with SEO. Flash and AJAX are both in nature not friendly for SEO. Flash and AJAX cannot be read by search engine spiders, so websites purely based on Flash and AJAX will not do well in search engine results. However, a website that lacks an effective design will not engage your audience, and thus create a bigger chance of losing potential clients. So, how can you make a website that utilizes Flash and/or AJAX while possessing the ability to achieve high results in search engine traffic?

The most important thing would be to make your key content in plain text. Search engine spiders are very much like a text-based browser, they cannot read text embedded in flash or an image. Making sure your key content (which is the content that is relative to your website and search queries) in text format will allow search engine spiders to access your pages and index your content. Somewhere in your design should be text based links as well. They may not be the greatest design elements, however search engine spiders cannot read buttons that are images, Flash, or AJAX, so text links will allow spiders to explore your entire website. Limiting your use of AJAX would be advised as well, since content created by AJAX is created dynamically, thus not allowing spiders to index content created by AJAX. Overall, Flash and AJAX would be recommended for certain design elements while leaving key content in a text format, thus allowing great search engine results for your website.