Callie Simms Marketing Blog

As an adult webmistress, blogger and generally geek-loving girl, I always pay attention to the debate on what is the best way to optimize the adult sites and what are the best marketing strategies for adult website owners.

One major question is about the use of Flash in web design and SEO. Most adult marketers think that flash can’t be used and it kills SEO. Well, that only a half truth. You can have a site with a flash lay over that is super duper SEO’d.

Making a flash site that is SEO friendly is not difficult – for someone who knows what they are doing. It takes a time and it takes effort. If you want use Flash, you must use JavaScript to progressively load the Flash content for search engines to index the contents of the Flash files; you must separate content from presentation and behavior.

There are many coding languages, but which one is best is is dependent on the site and its purpose. Just because Flash is COOL, doesn’t mean its better.

You have to think about what the goal of site, what is it supposed to communicate? What is message? Does it fit the medium?

For adult sites – its SEX. And for the adult entertainment related site, the answer is NO, the site doesn’t need Flash because in it makes SEO extremely difficult (even if done correctly), complicates the user experience, requires more web maintainence and decreases revenue potential of the website.

Flash & Content Related Drawbacks

Adult sites are based of sex and sexual content. A pay site offers thousands of images and movies to its subscribers and a escort’s sites sells her services. The majority of Adult sites have audio – podcasts, movies and graphics.

Search engine robots can’t see your graphics, can’t hear your audio, and won’t execute JavaScript or Flash. They need alternative descriptions of non-textual content and navigation that works when JavaScript and Flash are not available. So none of that content is indexable.

Internet users can choose to disable JavaScript and applets in their browser’s preferences and some browsers do not support these technologies at all. “Likewise, search engines’ “browsers” do not read scripts; therefore a webpage’s usability should not be crippled when scripts are not supported. Otherwise, search engines may not even index the page, let alone rank it well” (Andy Hagan).

By keeping the langauge simple, you maximize your marketing efforts and income potential. You don’t need Flash to create the user experience, you content does that.

Should an escort have a flash website?

No. While it looks pretty and exciting, for viewers on a slow connection, it takes forever to load.

No. Flash sites are not viewable on PDAs – a major outlet for clients that make seek her service.

No. Because it does hurt your SEO, as do graphic intensive sites.

If an escort still has one, make sure there is an HTML/Mobile version.

Related Resources:

• Geoff Stearns – Flash Object
• Andy Hagan - White Hat SEO
• Google – Webmaster Guidelines