5 reasons why you should avoid flash on your Estate Agency website

Flash has been around for quite some time and though many web designers and SEO’s warn website owners against using it, a surprising amount of Estate Agency websites still use this practice.

But you may ask, what’s so bad about flash? Here are 5 reasons you should you seek alternative solutions for flash:

1. Search Engines can’t read flash

Search engines in general are text based, meaning that to be found by Google your website needs content.

Google crawlers simply can’t read flash which means your keywords and web page won’t be indexed. This doesn’t necessarily mean Google won’t be able to see your website full stop but the content that is embedded within the flash files aren’t accessible by Google.

2. Speed

A flash website is generally very slow in terms of page loading. This is because the browser has to load the flash player and then the entire section of your site which is using flash.

Page load speed is one of Google’s main algorithm factors and has a huge effect on how they rank your website.  

3. Misses out on vital SEO essentials

Flash only websites don’t allow the essentials for SEO. The most important being that your website won’t be able to have different URLs for each page meaning only your homepage will rank for any keywords you hope to optimise for.

Also you will be missing H1 and Meta tags which are crucial for ranking within Google.

4 .Link juice

The links are embedded within the flash making them invisible to the search engines. Plus the links are only pointing to the homepage with no links going to deeper pages.

5. Google Analytics

Flash problems don’t report accurately in Google Analytics. Without this data it is hard to understand where your website needs improving.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant