Javascript, Flash, and (God forbid) tables may look cool.  You might even get them to work the same in every browser.  Admittedly, that is half the battle – making your site appealing to people, that is.  But the other half is building a website for search engines.

One way to see exactly what the search engines see is by looking at your code (or viewing the page source).  If you can’t read HTML, then checking out Google’s cache is your next best option.

There’s a few ways to do it.  One of my apps (SEO for Firefox) gives an option to look at the cached version of the page.  Or, when making a search, you can see the option next to each result; in this case, a holiday appropriate search:

Then, when selecting “Cached”, you see exactly what Google sees.  Be sure to choose the text only version:

As you can see, Google will highlight the keyword you searched for.  This way, if pressed, you can make a decision: be it a really cool flash intro or just some great content.

Nicki Hicks
Happy Halloween!