Good graphic design is important to any website wishing to attract and maintain the interest of users. But website owners should be aware of some of the implications of over-zealous graphic design for search engine optimisation.

Most people would agree that graphic design is an important element in web design and development. Part of what good graphic design adds to a webpage is aesthetic, a somewhat subjective area where a webpage either looks good, OK, or plain bad. Aesthetics can be important, as the general look and feel of a site can affect its credibility and the likelihood that a visit will convert to a sale. Another aspect of graphic design is utilitarian, meaning that good graphic design can simplify communication, navigation and the overall usability of a website.

So, graphic design is important, but there are good reasons not to allow graphic designers a free hand in your web development process, especially if they come from a strong print or multimedia background rather than a web background. The problem is that, too often, graphic designers do not adequately understand the nature of the web medium and of internet search engines in particular. This can lead to a situation where the potential performance of a website in search engine optimisation terms is seriously compromised by "features" such as Flash presentations, excessive graphic content, and excessive javascript. Used inappropriately, each of these can have serious consequences for where your website will eventually rank in search engines.

Flash is a great tool, and used appropriately it can certainly add visual and audio interest to a site. For some websites, perhaps those specialising in art, music, video and the like, it could even be argued that Flash is indispensable in some cases. But on far too many sites, excessive gratuitous use of Flash effectively renders those sites unindexable by search engines. The worst examples are those where a complete page, and often the most important page (the home page), consists entirely of a Flash presentation. Such pages usually hold little or no indexable text at all, with the content all tied up inside the Flash presentation ... which the search engine simply cannot see, read or index! Humans get a great show while search engines get nothing.

Excessive graphic content works similarly to a Flash presentation. Some websites consist of pages made up entirely of interlocking graphic images, with the images themselves containing the textual content of the page along with other important elements such as titles and headers. Again, the search engines see none of this as they cannot "read" graphics, so all they find is an effectively empty page.

Javascript is another great tool, and is virtually indispensable on most complex modern websites for a great variety of tasks. The problem with Javascript from a search engine optimisation perpective is when it is used to create things such as link menus. Again, from a graphic designer's point of view interesting visual effects such as roll-overs and pop-up menus can be achieved using Javascript. But as is the case with Flash and graphics, search engines do not do Javascript, so that any links that are locked up in Javascript code cannot be followed and those pages will not be indexed. In this respect search engines are quite different from web browsers.

The point here is not that the baby should be thrown out with the bath water ... Flash, graphics and Javascript are all part of the modern web development toolkit. But it is important not to lose sight of the ultimate goal of most business websites: sales. If the primary goal of your website is entertainment, then by all means give your graphic designers free reign. But if sales matter, then search engine ranking matters, in which case your graphic designers will need to be a little more restrained, resourceful and creative. In fact, this is an area where real graphic design skills come to the fore ... following the old minimalist adage less is more, a really good web designer can achieve highly effective and satisfying designs without resorting to technological overkill.