Hello,

I have a client whose site was created in Flash. It is a rather beautiful and lovely website but the problem (for me as the VA) is that I don't write Flash.

This means that I can never download images or upload documents as I can do with my other clients' sites.

So the client is dependent upon a big web design company that also does NBA websites...meaning that any changes to my client's site tend to take a back seat due to basketball playoff time when the design company is busiest. But because the website is so beautiful...and my client really likes it...changes to the site are slow to come and take months to occur.

I dislike not having control over the content and it limits me in supporting their social media because I typically use website content such as blogs and downloads from websites for social media content. I can't add social media widgets, upload flyers, add share and tweet buttons and all the little social media perks that help promote a business through its website. I've requested a blog but I have to wait weeks (possibly months) to get that up and going which again is a problem for me because much of my content for social media comes from blogging.

Anyway, here are my Flash questions:

1) What do companies do when they want to update their Flash sites? Do they pay for a web designer to update the site to freshen the content? I can only imagine how expensive that must be if they want to change content fairly frequently. Or do they keep a Flash person (someone other than the web design company) on staff to make changes?

2) As beautiful as this site may be, I see this client's Flash site as stagnant ...there is never any fresh content that can be added to this site unless requested months in advance to be done by the big design company. It was always my understanding that Google prefers and ranks sites which offer fresh, new content. Is my assumption incorrect?

3) Please talk to me about Flash sites...are they good for SEO? For some unknown reason, I was under the impression that they are not. Please explain.

Obviously, I am stumped because I have always had access to my clients' websites and materials. I have always been able to add articles, updates and posts but with this client account I cannot. So finding content and promoting events is rather challenging.

Thanks...

Janine

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Flash can be very beautiful, I am also able to create and maintain a flash site. However, I NEVER make them for my clients.

They are expensive to create as well as maintain. They are horrible for SEO too.

I always explain it to my clients that I quote services to that ask for flash "Imagine that the flash site is a giant picture. This means that your website is a giant image file without any text. How do search engines find content? By the text (as well as other items of course)."

TO answer your questions more on point:
1.They can do either it depends on the company
2. Correct, as well as number of pages, link backs, type of content, activity by other users so on and so on.
3. See above.

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Amanda Mock
My Virtual Little Helper

I agree with Amanda, Flash is not great for SEO. There were some updates to the way the SEs see Flash a while ago, but they just don't index as well mainly because it's really difficult for the SEs to 'see' the content that's there.

What we often end up doing for Flash clients is recreating the site in HTML with a WordPress CMS - you can actually code a lot of the look of Flash using other methods (maintain the look and movement of the Flash site, but provide real SEO value) This in itself is time consuming and expensive though.

I think especially now with iPad and such not supporting Flash it's even more of a concern.

If you want to add a blog or articles to the site and your client doesn't want to redo the whole thing one solution could be to stick a WordPress installation in there, give it the same overall design as the Flash site using HTML. It would have to be added to the main menu on the flash site for it all to be cohesive though.

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Thank you so much Amanda and Tess.

I have a request in for the WP blog to be added to the Flash site so that I can update it with fresh content and so on but again, that means the big design company will be doing that in order to add it to the flash site main menu. I'm hopeful, though.

I also offered, FYI to create a free WP.com blog page and customize as much as possible with the few photos I downloaded from the client's FB page which I maintain but he (the client) only wants to create the blog once. Fortunately, as I mentioned, I did convince him to create the blog in WP and then researched having it recreated in HTML as Tess suggested. But that won't occur any time soon.

The problem, sorry to continue to gripe, is that my job is to improve SEO and promote the developer's company through social media. We have a celebrity fundraising event coming up next month and all I have been able to do is promote it on the FB and Twitter pages (to death!) but can't promote on the website or a blog due to the Flash limitations. No more whining...I'll need to be more creative.

Thank you both, again! I appreciate your responses.

Janine

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