Some web designers may find it necessary to design a splash page as your homepage for some reasons. An SEO expert should optimize splash pages to obtain higher search engine ranking and search engine visibility for the website at hand.

Steven Fernandez

Splash pages can potentially have negative effects on your site’s findability. Try to avoid them as much as possible or correct them as a remedial on-page SEO (website optimization) step.

What Are Splash Pages?

You should have noticed that sometimes when you type the web address of a site to get into it, you’ll enter a heavy eye-catching graphic page. These pages are for different purposes like:

• Selecting a language,
• Selecting HTML or Flash version of the site,
• Making sure you want to see the content of the site (in case of adult sites),
• Redirecting visitors to another site,
• Impressing visitors with beautiful artistic graphics,
• etc.

In some cases, the use of splash pages are inevitable, but in many occasions they function as disappointing factor. they could be heavy pages that load very late and when loaded, taking more of visitors’ time to find what they want. In such cases, keeping a splash page is a must-do if you want to lose lots of search engine ranking!

Where Splash Pages Are Bad for Your Site

In some of the cases, using splash pages aren’t essentially required and the only function they have is negative for your organic SEO results. Obviously, we shouldn’t allow such pages to exist at our sites when:

• It’s because of selecting a language, because there are other methods to do so,
• It’s only for impressing our visitors before they enter the useful part of our sites,
• It’s to explain what the site is going to offer its visitors by audio/video presentations,
• etc.

Therefore, our common sense will lead us not to have such pages, because they couldn’t help our search engine ranking. Instead, if some of those features are helpful and you prefer to keep them, take one of the actions explained below to improve your page’s visibility in search engines.

How Improve Your Site’s Visibility Keeping Splash Page Elements

Depending on what you’ve got at your splash page and the vital need in keeping them, you can take one of the following steps:

• You can place links to other languages as part of your navigation theme.
• Allocate the golden spot of your page, top-to-middle-left and above the fold, to the presentation, gif animation, video, link to audio, etc.
• Include a distinguishable textual content, keyword-rich, below the fold just under the graphic image that has occupied the entire space above the fold. So, visitors could scroll down and read what they are looking for. Search engines will also find what they should find, because you put it on a platform readable to search engines like HTML.
• Insert a large visible statement above the fold to draw your visitors’ attention and warn them against what they must know before they navigate away from the homepage.
• etc.

In a nutshell, your homepage should have your textual content excellently optimized for search engines using the main keywords of your online business. Only this will enhance your search engine ranking as a top on-page SEO measure. Beautiful graphic or awesome multimedia aren’t what people search to buy. They’re looking for the information. First they should be able to find it. Second, they study it to see if that’s what they need.

I don’t want to deny the importance of graphics, multimedia, etc in providing information or convincing to buy from you. The point is your target customers should first be able to find you. These aren’t the elements that could lead them from search engines toward what you’ve got to offer at your site. Get them in first. Then, present your products to them.