Macromedia Flash, the de facto standard when it comes to animation in web design is becoming a very popular addition to web sites. And for good reason. The animation is smooth, colorful and infinitely customizable. However, one of the primary reasons we create web sites is to be found by potential customers using search engines. Here is where Flash animation can be a hindrance to good web design.

Generally, the Flash based splash pages are poorly ranked by search engines. Why? Because they do not contain searchable html text. Text, or content, is all that search engines look for. Graphics cannot be read by any search engines. Text embedded within a Flash animation cannot be read. As a result, those beautiful splash pages often work against the primary objective of your web site - to be found by the most people possible.

There is however, a way to use Flash and still make your opening or index.html page search engine friendly. That is to use a smaller Flash animation inserted into a html based page. The html will contain text to be read and indexed by the search engine. The Flash animation will be embedded into the page. This compromise is done to face the current limitations and realities of search engines. Until Flash is universally readable by search engines, this method combines the best of html and Flash in web design.