The idea behind “Splash Page” for websites is taken from the concept of “Splash Screen” in Web Gaming. Splash Screen is an image that appears, while the game is loading, that includes graphics telling you more about the game. And, seems like web designers got very impressed with this, and they introduced what we call – Splash Page for Websites.

Splash Page: What is it?

A website Splash Page introduces its users to the website, and contains a lot of graphics, flash and other animations to attract them towards it. There are two different types of Splash Page:

• Permanent Splash Pages - Which have a permanent location.
• Temporary Splash Pages - Which appear only once.

The main purpose of a Splash Page is to attract the attention of the users, by making it more visually appealing. Splash Pages enhance the look and feel of a website. While this attracts the attention of your normal visitors, it is not at all liked by Search Engine Spiders, resulting in low SEO rankings of your website.

Why Splash Pages are not good for SEO rankings?

Splash Pages are bad from the SEO perspective, though a lot of webmasters love them more than their children. Some of the webmasters are obsessed with introducing their visitors with a lot of graphics, and flash, to create a good first impression. But, contrary to their hopes, it restricts free traffic on your websites and badly affects its SEO rankings. The following are the main reasons why Splash Pages are not good for SEO rankings:

1. Splash Pages are not properly optimized:

Search Engine Spiders rely on the text, and links, on your website to index it properly. Graphics, Images and Flash are not indexed by Search Engine Spiders beyond ALT attribute text for the images. And, even now, Flash is not readable to the Search Engine Spiders. Thus, it reduces the overall SEO rankings of your website.

2. Reduces your number of visitors:

Splash Page causes valuable visitors to leave your website. Imagine is 100,000 people enter your site every month through the splash screen, and only 30,000 enter directly through the home page, then you are loosing 70,000 visitors even before they see your home page.

3. Splash Page complicates your website structure:

Search Engines rank your top level URL’s first. So, having your home page under your Splash Page can reduce its SEO rankings. Thus, there is no need to waste your top-level URL on unimportant splash content.

4. No Keywords, No Links

SEO is normally based on keywords, which are not normally present on Splash Pages. Splash Pages contains just images, graphics and animations. It has only one link, which goes to your home page. So, there is no probability that anyone else would link to your Splash page. This results in its low SEO rankings.

5. Splash Page reduces the Page Load Time:

Having a Splash Page, on your website, reduces its Page Load time. Page load time is a very important factor in computing the SEO rankings. So, it is important to get your users to the home page as quickly as possible.

Thus, you must keep the above factors in mind while going for a Splash Page for your website. Keeping in mind the above factors can help to increase your website’s SEO rankings, resulting in more free traffic on it.

Splash Page: How to make it SEO friendly?

However, if you still want to go for Splash Pages for your website, then make sure that you include “keyword rich” and “useful” content in it. This is not just good for SEO purposes, but also provides useful information to your users. But do make sure that your content is apt for both, users and Search Engines.

Your Splash Page must generate the interest of your users, in your website. Rather than just stuffing it with graphics, and animations, you must try to make it interactive and interesting. This would make your users delve deeper in your website for more information.

Thus, make sure that your Splash Page provides information about your website to your users, that can also be easily indexed by Search Engines for higher SEO rankings.