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SEO is a very important element of website design. If you ignore it customers will ignore you (your site). To help you with this important topic please checkout our articles. There are also many good books written on the subject of SEO, many of which can make you an expert in a few hours. If you intend on having a successful online business we highly recommend learning as much as possible about SEO and applying it to your website during the design and development phase.

SEO Don't: Using Fancy Flash Designs for Your Site
By Alexis Siemon

Optimizing your website for the search engines can help you get more traffic and, eventually, more sales. That's why it's so important to avoid certain website pitfalls. For instance, it's a bad idea to use images for your critical site content . The search engines just can't "see" content that's in graphic form.

A close cousin to that potential SEO disaster is using Flash to design your website. If your designer or Web development firm suggests a cool Flash design, resist the temptation and say no.

This always makes my designer friends grumble, because they love to have the freedom to make a really cool Flash site. And I don't blame them. But, alas, just like images, search engines can't see content that is programmed in Flash.

Now, as I write this, news has come out that Google and Yahoo are working closely with the makers of the Flash program to rectify this issue. The two search giants are now able to crawl some Flash content. While this is exciting news, there are still limitations. Not all search engines are involved in this new development, and not all content contained within a Flash application can be crawled. To be on the safe side for now, your SEO should steer you away from Flash.

Recently, I was asked to make a few suggestions on how to improve the SEO of a friend's website. As soon as I saw that the site was designed exclusively in Flash, I knew the only piece of advice worth giving them: Redesign.

What should you do if you have a Flash site? Well, like I said to my friend, I recommend a redesign. If you are dead set on implementing Flash on your site, use it in non-critical areas only. Use HTML for your navigation and content and reserve the Flash for special areas where you would normally have images.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .