Hello,

I am making a website that has a flash intro, 2 versions of the main page (1 in Flash, and 1 in Html), and a "store" which is basically an e commerce site with shopping cart ect. On top of that, there will be an English and French version to everything (except the flash intro which is the homepage)

My questions is how can I best optimize the site for the major search engines because of the use of flash and the store. To the best of my knowledge the best ways to optimize a site are to get relevant inbound links, have consistent traffic running threw the site, target specific keywords in all the content, use meta tags (although not as useful as they used to be).

Are there any other good things to do? Are there any special things to do within flash, from what I understand it is almost impossible for a search engine to understand flash.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks in advance.

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Nadav Shenker
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All of the things you just mentioned are the best ways to get ranked and I agree with your assessment with flash - I would avoid it if I was you I have never seen a flash page that actually added value. You should put your site up for review in this forum when completed. One thing I would add though is that getting on an directory like DMOZ or Yahoo is also very important.

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I appreciate your comments. I will definitely post the website here for review upon completion.

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Please feel free to contact me anytime,

All the best,
Nadav Shenker
Email: nadavshenker@videotron.ca
Office: 514-684-4700
Cell: 514-299-6099

***
Pre-Launch applications now being accepted
for a great Direct Sales opportunity.
Call or email me for details

*Ask about the referral program if you want to make money without actually joining a direct sales company.

The only thing you have to worry about is the duplicate home pages. Where the pages are in different languages, you don't have to worry. However, if you actually have two home pages with 'real' duplicate content, you'll want to change up the wording, or do away with the actual duplicate.

But if you mean that your flash intro is a home page, and your content page is a home page, then don't worry. I'm just digging a little to help you as best I can.

Flash Inclusion

You're right about flash not being read by search engines. And if you don't have any 'robot-readable' content on your flash home page, search engines are not going to have any way of evaluating your website with respect to content. That means no pagerank credit for page content. But that's all it means.

You can still boost your pagerank through backlinks, which as you recognized, are very powerful. If you're into promoting your site through the development of backlinks, you're really gong to have no problems, flash intro or not. There are a lot of sites out there that have virtually no relevant keyword content on their pages, and they still do really well in the search engines. But you have to be on top of your game. A little paid advertising wouldn't hurt either.

Whenever possible, I try to composite my code and flash so that the page works for itself. And then I go and promote, promote, promote. Every advantage I can take, I do. And you should too.

But you do what you have to do to make your site work best. And if this means keeping your flash intro, that's what it means. Just remember that if you do, those backlinks are really going to be your bread and butter, friend. Encode them with relevant keywords as anchor text, and never stop working on them.

Good luck.

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