Given the lastest Google update, should I rewrite my Flash site or try to present an alternative HTML/CSS site?

[mj775]

I have a site that was created using Flash. The reasoning behind this was, at the time, that I didn't care if the site ranked or not (portfolio site). Now I would like to drive traffic to the site from SE's. Given the Penguin update, should I rewrite my Flash site in HTML/CSS or present an alternative site for bots and browsers that don't support Flash?

My concern is that by presenting an alternative site to bots and non Flash supporting browsers that the SE's will see potentially see this as cloaking. Thoughts and advice would be much appreciated.

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

This link may answer some of your questions about flash, I am in no way a flash expert, but this page does cite the sources (and one of them is dreclty from Google on the matter

http://uxmyths.com/post/717781129/myth-18-flash-is-evil

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

Presenting the site differently is not an example of malicious or manipulative cloaking, but that does not mean you won't get "lumped" into this category since technically flash in its current form has been indexed since 2008 (per Google's blog)

In my personal opinion, from a UX and search engine standpoint I prefer html php asp - also feel overall they are more forward compatible.

Shane

[W3designer]

From a designers point of view the amount of time and effort that will go into creating and presenting an alternative site for google bots and browsers would be the same as just creating a new functional website that is Search engine Friendly.

I would rather create a new website using XHTML with CSS which gets picked up in search engines really well as the content and styling code are handled on separate pages. Its important to keep the styling and coding separate as bots read the contents and styling codes that are on the page just act as a barrier.

don't forget to use H1 tags for your targeted keywords and if you decide to use a flash movie - you can add additional css to bring up an still image for browsers that don't support flash.