SEO Tycoon

**TweakedBat** · 02-05-2007, 05:35 AM

Ok, so my client, whom I have just finished designing a site for, wants a fancy flash intro to be the first thing that the user sees upon clicking through to his site.

The web-designer within me cringes at the request, I personally don't like intro/splash pages, especially flash ones.

My concern is this: He wants an intro, but he also wants a well-optimized website.

So basically, from what I've read, the index.html (apart from being the default page), should also contain body text with an adequate keyword to text ratio, as well as the usual important <title> tags and meta description tags, in order to be well optimized. Am I correct in assuming this?

If I am, then it wouldn't make sense to have a flash intro, which contains no readable text of any sort, as that would lower it's chances of getting a good listing on a SERP. Correct?

If am wrong about something, please let me know. My client wants this intro, but I personally think it's a bad idea, and am planning on breaking the uh.. "bad news" to him about it soon, I just need some opinions/ideas to help back up my point.

Any help will be muchly appreciated. Cheers.

**Normanc** · 02-05-2007, 05:55 AM

Splash pages are indeed disliked by Search Engine spiders. IMO, you can satisfy both your client and the spiders by disallowing spiders to crawl that page through robots.txt

I'd love to see other SEOs throwing some light on this issue.

**chrishirst** · 02-05-2007, 06:17 AM

1/ There is no such thing as a "keyword to text" ratio.

the main problem (IMO) with splash pages of any variety, is that they place one more click in the way of the rest of the pages, and as click "depth" is used for determining how important your pages are on your site it does set the pages at a disadvantage. Putting some proper navigation on the splash page rather than the ubiquitous "click to enter" can go a long way.

However, Jonathan Hochman has this solution SEO Friendly Flash

**Normanc** · 02-05-2007, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

1/ There is no such thing as a "keyword to text" ratio.

the main problem (IMO) with splash pages of any variety, is that they place one more click in the way of the rest of the pages, and as click "depth" is used for determining how important your pages are on your site it does set the pages at a disadvantage. Putting some proper navigation on the splash page rather than the ubiquitous "click to enter" can go a long way.

However, Jonathan Hochman has this solution SEO Friendly Flash

I agree with Chris....

I think that by "keyword to text" ratio, he actually meant "text-to-code" ratio.

**gringo** · 07:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Normanc;345193I

think that by "keyword to text" ratio, he actually meant "text-to-code" ratio.

Also useless! You can quite easily find high ranking pages that have a low text to code ratio.

How much code you have in your page is irrelevant, the search engines are interested in content.

I agree with the stuff about splash pages, they alienate visitors (at least this one), too.

**TweakedBat** · 02-05-2007, 07:47 PM

Ah ok thanks for clearing up the keyword thing. I wasn't entirely sure.

Quote:

The main problem (IMO) with splash pages of any variety, is that they place one more click in the way of the rest of the pages, and as click "depth" is used for determining how important your pages are on your site it does set the pages at a disadvantage.

Yes, that was my main concern really, thanks for backing up my own views on the matter

Clients always seem to think fancy splash/flash pages are the way to go

Thanks for the link, too. I will definitely check it out once I get home later today.

Cheers for the responses all.