Yesterday I got a call from a client that decided she wanted a new look to her site, "Look at this site, this is what I want my site too look like".
The real estate site made completely with flash and images:
Now here is the key to search engine optimization you might have never learned about: use text. Thats right. The search engines need some text to read on a page to know what its about!
On the front page there is not even 1 word for the search engines to read. NOT ONE! There isn't even a title to the page!
The best way to check what the search engines can see is by 'highlighting' the text on a page. If you can highlight it letter by letter then you know the search engines can read it. If when you highlight it, it looks like the above picture and automatically highlights a whole area, then it is an image and the search engine only sees it as an image.
Where's the text?
After entering the site by clicking on the flashy 'door' with the ocean view we come to their "home page". Here they actually have a title! Woo hoo! The only thing is that all the title says is "John Sarr Properties".
Not very optimized...
The only text I can 'highlight' is at the very bottom which says "Equal housing opportunity. © 2008 John Saar Properties. Fair Housing Disclaimer | Privacy Policy"
Can you tell what city they are selling real estate in by this information? I know I can't. And the search engines won't be able to either.
Lets take a look at the rest of the page:
Title: Like I said earlier, they have a unoptimized title.
Images: All the real text and content for the page, including the menu, is in images making longer loading time for the page and nothing for the search engines to read.
Flash: They have a nice little flash image on the right side of the page.
Is it really that bad for SEO?
So what am I really talking about? Is it really as bad as it looks? YES!
I will share with you all one of my favorite SEO tools: SeoDigger.com
SeoDigger.com is a tool that allows you to type in a specific website and then shows you all of the keywords that site ranks for in Google!!! The best part about it is that it is FREE!
Lets look up John Sarr's website on Seo Digger.
Here are the results that show up for me:
What do they rank for? The only words that Google can see: John Saar, John Saar Properties and Saar!
This is a major local brokerage's site, and they don't rank anywhere for "'our city' real estate" or realtor or any other main keyword!
So how should you use flash and images on your website?
I would say to not make a whole site out of them! Every site should look and feel unique but you need to mix it up with some real content not only for your users but for the search engines as well.
A note about my images: For my first image I decided to go old school and used paint to edit it.
I conformed and used photoshop for the second one :)
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Thanks for sharing that, I just tried it -- it had 30, dont know if that is good or not! Most of them had numbers, but there were a few that showed a zero ........ thanks again for the tip, I bookmarked it!