Saturday, August 20, 2011

SEO | Ways To Keep Your Splash Page And Still Improve SEO

By Andrew Redfern @ 18th August 2011 8:30 am

For many people, a compromise or middle ground must be found between a chic, stylish or eye-grabbing website, and one that ticks all the boxes for good Search Engine Optimisation , or SEO . This is because once a human user lands on a page, all that matters to them is the website that they find before them.

The more drop dead gorgeous it is, the more simplistic to use it is, the better for them. But there are other important website factors to consider, and if your site doesn't practice good SEO a larger number of potential users won't find your drop dead gorgeous website in the first place.

When a keyword or key phrase is punched into a search engine, such as Google or Bing, the search engine sends its crawlers out into the web to find the most useful and relevant websites with information pertaining to the search. These crawlers aren't looking for pretty pictures they're looking for good old fashioned text: strings of original, relevant, reliable information.

Let's face it, calling them crawlers, personifies them as living, thinking organisms but we know that they aren't. They are basic limited functions impeded in their scope. Your website could be a modern marvel of design, navigation and imagery, but if it does not contain enough text, the crawlers simply will not find it, and subsequently many potential users will not find it either.

Many people want a landing image or a main page which is one big splash page that is all made up of flash. This isn't necessarily good for SEO, because search engines can't read flash, and yet a great deal of you still want to use the technique.

If you absolutely must use the technique, why not design your landing image or splash page to end at the fold, and include useful text content or text navigation links beneath the fold? For those of you who aren't aware the fold refers to the area of a page which is visible to the user without the need to scroll down.

This is a great way to find a happy medium between a glorious main image and a good SEO strategy: simply stick all of the juicy, search engine enticing text content beneath the fold.

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