Splash pages question

[Claymazing]

Hi, I was wondering if having a splash page that is mainly just graphics and very little text on the site's index.html / entrance is a bad idea... this splash page is very complimentary to the products, but is it perhaps hurting our exposure to search engine bots? Should I get rid of the fancy splash page and go right to the main site page?

www.Claymazing.com

-Thanks!

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Well yes.

If you are going to have a splash page, it should be loaded with keywords, product names and descriptions, links to the products etc.

Using the search keywords and product names in paragraphs about the products is much more important to the search engines than pictures are.

[Hurricane Bob]

I've always been a fan of splash pages, but they can be useless in the world of search engine optimization (SEO).

Here's my thoughts on the subject:

First, ALWAYS offer a "skip intro" link for users to quickly bypass the splash screen.

Fancy graphics and "Flash" intros can look really cool, and if properly used can add great impact to a website, but they won't get you on the first three search results pages in Google.

You need original keyword rich text content and hyperlinks to various parts of your site from the home page/splash page.

One of the basic rules of "on page" SEO is that you should have the important keywords and text at the top of the page for the best search engine exposure, but that doesn't look so great does it?

I've found that having the text on the bottom of the page is better than not having it there at all. You can have your splash/flash graphics at the top of the page for human visitors to see, and all your text and links at the bottom for search engine spiders to see.

If you place your graphics centered in a table assigned to 90% of the screen height, at the top of the page, and all your text and links OUTSIDE of the table on the bottom of the page, most human users will not notice or bother to scroll down to see the contents at the bottom. You still get the same splash screen effect, with the benefit of juicy text and links for the googlebots.

Here is an example of a site I created using this method that enjoys an enviable position in the Google results pages for most of their keywords:

www.nowet.com (http://www.nowet.com)

Here's another example of adding text links (and a non-flash version of the site) to a "one page" Flash website that would otherwise be invisible to Google.

www.fieldsmusic.com (http://www.fieldsmusic.com)

I also used it on my own website:

www.hurricanegraphics.org (http://www.hurricanegraphics.org)

Hope you find this info helpfull.

Hurricane Bob

[Claymazing]

Very cool solution...thanks so much for the help! I was wondering how things would look depending on the size of one's browser window, but with the splash elements in a table, resizing the window keeps the splash screen centered... great examples, you made it easy for me to understand...

Thanks!

-Mike

I've always been a fan of splash pages, but they can be useless in the world of search engine optimization (SEO).

Here's my thoughts on the subject:

First, ALWAYS offer a "skip intro" link for users to quickly bypass the splash screen.

Fancy graphics and "Flash" intros can look really cool, and if properly used can add great impact to a website, but they won't get you on the first three search results pages in Google.

You need original keyword rich text content and hyperlinks to various parts of your site from the home page/splash page.

One of the basic rules of "on page" SEO is that you should have the important keywords and text at the top of the page for the best search engine exposure, but that doesn't look so great does it?

I've found that having the text on the bottom of the page is better than not having it there at all. You can have your splash/flash graphics at the top of the page for human visitors to see, and all your text and links at the bottom for search engine spiders to see.

If you place your graphics centered in a table assigned to 90% of the screen height, at the top of the page, and all your text and links OUTSIDE of the table on the bottom of the page, most human users will not notice or bother to scroll down to see the contents at the bottom. You still get the same splash screen effect, with the benefit of juicy text and links for the googlebots.

Here is an example of a site I created using this method that enjoys an enviable position in the Google results pages for most of their keywords:

www.nowet.com (http://www.nowet.com)

Here's another example of adding text links (and a non-flash version of the site) to a "one page" Flash website that would otherwise be invisible to Google.

www.fieldsmusic.com (http://www.fieldsmusic.com)

I also used it on my own website:

www.hurricanegraphics.org (http://www.hurricanegraphics.org)

Hope you find this info helpfull.

Hurricane Bob

[Random Confusion]

When the web first started poking its head out, most web pages were one page, or there was a big "splash page" and then one or two other pages for content (Remik, do you still have that old Microsoft screenshot that you can put up here?)

At the time I thought it was pretty cool, and I knew I was in the right spot when I saw that main graphic page (after waiting 10 minutes for it to download, mind.) After so many years of performing support for people who are..... computer reality challenged..... I have more of a need to find information on a problem, or a solution for a "client"s needs quickly before they loose interest. Now when I see a spash screen or lengthy intro page I want to scream and go somewhere else to find what I'm looking for (and for those without an obvious "skip intro" or "enter here" link get dumped quickly - no matter how good the product is or how badly I need it.)

Yes, a lot of the flash movies, graphics, and animations are cool, and my friends send me links to them all of the time, but we (friends who are engineers who also have limited time to just sit and wait out the new-fangled "hello world"s that web sites feel they HAVE to have) think that you should put them as an extension of your "about us" portions of your site or somesuch where we can expect to spend a minute or two of downloading content before watching a 30-second clip of a 3-D rendering of Ronald Regan being a Max Headroom talking about your product.

Anyhoo, they're neat sometimes, but it's like walking into a store and finding another set of blacked-out doors in front of you that you have to figure out how to get through in order to REALLY enter the store. It's annoying, takes time, and the average user doesn't want to go through the effort on a bad day.

RC