There are some beautiful jaw dropping websites out there, but their chances of ranking high for any target keywords are next to none because of the use of only graphics and flash, and little to no search engine spider readable text on the pages. You need to hire a web design company that knows what they're doing when it comes to search engine optimization and internet marketing. If they don't, it could cost you thousands in the long run trying to go back and change everything because you're not getting any search engine traffic to your website.
You could easily spend $5,000-$10,000 on a flash website designed by a web design firm that uses fancy fonts embedded in graphics, only to find out later that the search engine spiders can't read your content. This means that the search engines will not be able to index your site properly so you can forget about showing up on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. for your industry specific keywords!
This is critical information you must know about web design and search engine optimization before choosing a designer or agency to create your business website!
There is nothing wrong with a few flash elements on your website as long as it is used sparingly. The majority of the content on your site must be text that the search engine spiders can read, and this text should be on every page that you want found in the search engines. Even Google advises webmasters that the Google crawler cannot read text contained in images.
Also, you must understand that everyone doesn't have a fast internet connection. Believe it or not, there are still many people using dial up. Even those with slower DSL connections have to wait longer than 5 seconds for a flash site to load. The longer your website visitor has to wait, the more visitors you will lose from impatience. If your site doesn't load within 5 seconds, you have a major problem! Your potential client will leave your site and go to one of your competitor's sites where they do not have to wait forever just to see the home page.
