When it comes to web design it can be exceptionally tempting to opt for a showy site with a lot of interactive flash based content and aesthetically appealing images. However it is important when developing a website that these elements don’t prove detrimental to the way that search engines perceive it. A large percentage of traffic to websites comes from search engines, as such it is vital to ensure that the website is properly optimised for the crawlers that they send out to analyse sites. This article is going to outline a couple of pitfalls that many websites fall into and explain that while these techniques may look good, they can limit the potential that the website could achieve.

Images – There is a trend among websites to have text contained within images on the pages. While often this can look good, it stops search engine bots being able to scan the text the images contain. One of the most important elements that search engines take into account, when ranking a page for a particular key phrase, is how well the content relates to the phrase. If the content is all contained in an image the bot will be unable to take this into account likely resulting in a lower position in the search engines than could be achieved by providing the information using HTML text.

Flash Content – Interactive, animated web pages can sound like an appealing prospect. However, similarly to content contained within images, search engine bots are unable to read the content that is displayed in the flash. Recently these bots have been advancing, and some claim that they take flash into account. In reality however the results are still unpredictable; this can be particularly problematic if flash is used for navigation as a bot may prove to be unaware of the links resulting in search engines failing to visit/index certain pages.

Ultimately websites need to strike a balance between the aesthetics that images and flash can provide with informative, well written, HTML based content that search engines are able to crawl. By doing this, site owners will be able to retain the style whilst ensuring that they maximize their potential search engine raking which will in turn drive up traffic to the site. In order to help websites reach their full potential it can be enormously beneficial to employ a website design company that specialise in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).