Metatags Aint SEO
There was a discussion I was involved with recently with a designer who creates totally Flash websites. He was unhappy with my statements that Flash will not allow crawlers and search engine tools to read the site. I thought it would be a good post to explain to you why this is.
His statement to me was "If you type in "bobthephotographer" in Google he comes up on the first page. Noticing that the URL for the site was "bobthephotographer.com" this of course doesn't surprise me. If I dial your phone number will you answer?
Duh.
He pointed to his design company's built in meta tag tool. So I tried a few of the metatags in his photographer's site to see what would happen.
Entered:
Chicago food photography - 0 out of 250 returns
Editorial food photography - 0 out of 250 returns
Chicago Still Life Photography - 0 out of 250 returns
And so forth. This is because even though the page had the meta tags, it didn't have the rest of what is needed. The page should have content that the SE's can 'read'. It should have links they can follow... to pages with more readable content. The pages should have descriptive names that will help the SE's understand what is on the page.
When you view the source of a web page you will see lots of "code" but the most important thing is that when you look at a total Flash site you will see code that looks like this:
(embed="movie_photographer.swf")
That's it. That is a Flash file.
The text and images in a Flash file hae been converted to SWF - graphics, not readable by a SE that is looking for text to read. So it goes right on by the site. Since there is little of interest to the SE, it will eventually conclude that the site is 'dead' and rank it so.
Question: can you make a site be not considered dead if it is totally Flash?
Sure. Constant effort toward marketing including the traditional (magazine ads, radio, tv... all the really expensive stuff.) If that is your appetite, cool. If not... well.
Isn't it better to make a site that helps promote you free when someone looks for stuff that you do? Isn't it better to be found when an AD in Alaska is looking for a food shooter in Chicago?
Yep, we think so too.
More on using a 'hybrid' approach (Flash and html) to produce a site that can answer both challenges.
His statement to me was "If you type in "bobthephotographer" in Google he comes up on the first page. Noticing that the URL for the site was "bobthephotographer.com" this of course doesn't surprise me. If I dial your phone number will you answer?
Duh.
He pointed to his design company's built in meta tag tool. So I tried a few of the metatags in his photographer's site to see what would happen.
Entered:
Chicago food photography - 0 out of 250 returns
Editorial food photography - 0 out of 250 returns
Chicago Still Life Photography - 0 out of 250 returns
And so forth. This is because even though the page had the meta tags, it didn't have the rest of what is needed. The page should have content that the SE's can 'read'. It should have links they can follow... to pages with more readable content. The pages should have descriptive names that will help the SE's understand what is on the page.
When you view the source of a web page you will see lots of "code" but the most important thing is that when you look at a total Flash site you will see code that looks like this:
(embed="movie_photographer.swf")
That's it. That is a Flash file.
The text and images in a Flash file hae been converted to SWF - graphics, not readable by a SE that is looking for text to read. So it goes right on by the site. Since there is little of interest to the SE, it will eventually conclude that the site is 'dead' and rank it so.
Question: can you make a site be not considered dead if it is totally Flash?
Sure. Constant effort toward marketing including the traditional (magazine ads, radio, tv... all the really expensive stuff.) If that is your appetite, cool. If not... well.
Isn't it better to make a site that helps promote you free when someone looks for stuff that you do? Isn't it better to be found when an AD in Alaska is looking for a food shooter in Chicago?
Yep, we think so too.
More on using a 'hybrid' approach (Flash and html) to produce a site that can answer both challenges.
posted by the PHOTOtool Guys at 11:48 AM
