How a Splash Page May Hurt Your Website

In my previous post I talked about the disconnect between most web visitors perception of a Splash Page and some website owners insistence upon having one.

Today I want to touch on some reasons why a Splash Page may hurt your website:

Your Web Visitors Don't Care

A web visitor will usually come to your site for some information or hopefully to make a purchase.  By having the Home Page of a website be a intro Splash Page, you are hindering the visitors experience.  This is a kin to walking into a major department store and being forced to stop and watch a 10-20 second video before you can enter the store. 

Your Home Page is the most important page on your website.  In my opinion, having a Splash Page gives a visitor a bad first impression of your site.  This page screams ME, ME, ME instead of focusing the attention on the visitors needs.

Fortunately most Splash Pages come with a Skip Intro link so you can bypass the video.  But why do you want to spend the money on creating a Splash Page when most visitors will become annoyed and click the Skip Intro link as fast as they can?

Reduction In Search Engine Rankings

Search Engines (SE) place an increased emphasis on the Home Page of a website.  By having a Splash Page be the official Home Page this in effect reduces the importance of your true Home Page.

A good Home Page will act as sort of a table of contents for your site containing most of your main keyword phrases.  The Slash Page is in essence a big graphic advertisement with virtually no text for the SE to index.

Most external links to a website will be to the Home Page.  It makes no sense from a linking strategy point of view to waste these valuable links to a Splash Page.  Links from external websites will be more effective if they point to the real content and not to an advertisement.

Site Performance Problems

There are still a good percentage of people who access the Internet with a dial-up service.  Admittedly this is becoming less of an issue, but downloading a large Splash Page can really affect a visitor's experience when using a low bandwidth connection.  You will experience a larger than normal bailout from a website among these visitors.

In conclusion, I don't want to trash all Splash Pages, but for the majority of small to medium business owners, a Splash Page is an unnecessary expense and will cause unwanted visitor frustrations.

The Great Spalsh Page Disconnect

I am not a fan of Splash intro pages.

These Splash intro pages are usually a Flash animation that (1) makes you wait for it to download and (2) holds you captive for 10, 20 or more seconds before you are invited into the website to find the information that you were initially interested in.  I can't click the Skip Intro link fast enough.

I continually read different articles and usability studies that rate Splash pages as a major annoyance to web visitors.  A recent article from Silicon Cloud called 12 ways to Irritate Your Visitors lists Splash pages as their #8 annoyance.

But I still get prospects coming to my web development business requesting a Splash intro page for their site.

Why is this?  Do they think it's cool?  Do they think it's part of the corporate branding process?  Do they have too much money to spend?  I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic.

It's funny, when I ask the prospect when they are the surfer, do they wait and watch the animation or do they head for the Skip Intro link.  More times than not, they click the link.

In my next post, I present some solid business reasons why a Splash intro page is hurting your web site.

Answers to the Biggest Search Marketing Questions

I've mentioned the valuable resources of MarketingSherpa before, and they've done it again.  They just released an outstanding question and answer article on search marketing.  12 leading experts give their thoughts on seven pertinent questions:

1. What's the most common or biggest mistake you see paid search marketers making right now?
2. What's the biggest search engine optimization (SEO) mistake you commonly see being made?
3. 2005 was the year of expanding keyword lists; what's the best competitive tactic to improving search ROI for 2006 for clients who have expanded their keywords as far really as it's worth going?
4. Using press releases to get search engine traction -- this appears to be the hot trend of 2006, do you see anyone doing it really successfully? Any practical tips on making it work?
5. Pay Per Call -- is this going to get enough traction to be a major segment in 2006? Who should be testing it, and who should not?
6. Linking strategies -- getting hot again for SEO (shades of 1996), got a practical tip or stuff to avoid on this front?
7. Are you alarmed by any trends in Search Marketing Industry these days? Anything you think folks should be watching out about?

This article is free for the next week or so.  So be sure to print out a copy for yourself.

Paying the Ultimate Search Engine Price

No matter how big your company is, if you break the rules you will be punished.  Matt Cutts of Google wrote in his blog over the weekend that BMW.de (BMW's German website) has been removed from Google's index.  It seems that the company's website was delivering keyword rich text to the Search Engines and totally different content to human visitors.

This technique is called Doorway pages and is very deceptive.  Matt wrote:

That’s a violation of our webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”

BMW is not the only major corporation to be caught.  Ricoh was creating similar doorway pages and will be removed shortly.  Their only recourse now is to remove the offending code and contact Google for possible re-inclusion.

Don't treat your search engine optimization efforts as a get rich quick scheme.  You may be successful in the short term, but if caught, you'll pay the ultimate price!

***UPDATE***

As of the the evening of February 7th, both BMW and Ricoh have removed the offending pages and have been re-instated into Google's index.

Handy Link Suggestion Tool

As Search Engines (SE) place more emphasis on obtaining links from thematically-related websites, your job as a website owner is to find as many of these related websites that will link to you.  But the hardest part was trying to find these sites.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook has a great and free link suggestion tool for you to use.  Simply enter your keyword phrase into the box and select from the drop down box what qualifier you want added to your search.  For example, if you sell lighting fixtures, then type in lighting fixtures and select Add a site to find a list of websites that will allow you to submit a link.

But the fun doesn't end there.  Use this tool to find blogs, article sites, directories, ezines, and a lot more.  Don't be surprised to see a list returned to you that has over 100 links for you to investigate.  Now you have no excuses not to find related websites to link with.

Preserving Your Rankings During a Domain Name Change

I've had a couple of opportunities lately to advise clients on how to preserve their Search Engine (SE) rankings and traffic while we have launched new websites using a different domain name.  This advice also holds true if you have restructured your website on the same domain name.

There are a couple of big hurdles to overcome when you decide to use a new domain name for your website. First is to gracefully redirect your existing SE traffic to the new website and secondly helping your visitors get around the new website.

Use a 301 Redirect to Your New Website

In the world of Apache web servers, the .htaccess file resides in the root directory and can contain a multitude of commands that control how your website is presented to the visitor.  This file is a basic text file and can be created in any editor and uploaded to the server.  Here is the command to be placed in the old domain name's .htaccess file to redirect people from your old web address to the new web address:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.newdomain.com/newpage.html

You would repeat this for every web page that you need to redirect.  You can easily test your handy work by entering the old web page address into your browser and, if successful, you should be redirected to the new web page.

Helping Your Visitors in the New Website

No matter how thorough you are with your redesign, people may still have difficulty finding their way around your new website.  You should implement a site map to help the human and SE visitors find your new content.  I have already wrote about site maps in this post.

Finally, don't forget to inform your linking partners that you have a new web address.

What's In Store for 2006?

The end of every year usually brings about a time of reflection for the year that has past and some predictions for the upcoming new year.  It's no different in the world of Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing.  Stuntdubl has a good recap of the important issues and trends that emerged in 2005 and his "predictions" for 2006.

Two main themes to notice in Stuntdubl's lists are links and content.  With Google's recent Jagger update, links from thematically related and trusted websites are now the only way to increase your link popularity.  And website owners will need to be more active in providing their audience with content that is fresh, relevant, and optimized.

I wish all the Duct Tape Marketing readers a Happy New Year and may everyone have their best year in 2006!

Newsweek article on SEO

There is an interesting (and short) article in Newsweek on the subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  It's a good read for the lay person. I suggest that if you are hiring an SEO firm, you better do your research to make sure that their techniques for optimizing your site (getting higher rankings) are considered ethical and not "black hat".

In addition, Matt Cutts - a Google software engineer - has responded to the article in his blog.  Give this a read as it goes into more depth and provides a better explanation of why certain sites rank better than others.  He also offers a tease for great ways to get links that will help in Google.

Give Away Information to Get More Customers

This philosophy is nothing new in the world of website marketing, but I would like to give you a specific example to show you how to put this into practice.

One of my recent web clients, Kevyn Aucoin Beauty (KAB), is a high-end cosmetics company located in New York City.  Started by the late Kevyn Aucoin, this company continues to sell his makeup, accessories and books.  The company successfully capitalizes on their large customer base by offering free makeup lessons taken directly from one of Kevyn's books.

Smokey Eyes is the most recent example.  This lesson plan shows the visitor how to apply the makeup step-by-step to achieve the desired look.  Included in the lesson are links to the makeup, accessories, and featured book for purchase from their on-line store.

This free makeup lesson strategy works well for KAB as four of the top ten visited pages on their website are the lesson plans.  KAB's customers are continually looking for new and different looks using the company's products.

Take a look at the products or services that you offer for sale.  Is there anything that you can give away to entice your customers buy?

Google's Jagger Update and What it Means For Your Website

For those of you who may not be aware, Google has recently completed a three phase algorithm change called Jagger.  This has resulted in some pages either dropping in the rankings or disappearing completely.

Google, as well as other Search Engines, are in a constant battle to provide their searching audience the most relevant results for their particular search keyword phrases.  Identifying and cleaning up highly ranked "spammy" results is always paramount to the SEs.

Some of the more recent issues Google had to deal with were:

• Reciprocal linking abuse
• CSS spamming techniques
• Blog comment spam

Google brought some of these problems on themselves when it was revealed that incoming links to your website increased the rankings.  It didn't take long for people to devise ways to create thousands of incoming links to artificially inflate their link popularity.

What Does This Mean To You

To achieve high rankings for your site you really need to do only a few things:

1. Create compelling content that your audience needs.
2. Strategically place your main keyword phrases in your web pages.
3. Obtain links from other websites that are thematically related to you.

If you make your website a valuable resource to your target audience, then you will be rewarded in the SE rankings as well.  It's not going to be fast and easy, but you will be insulated from dramatic drops or exclusions from the SEs when they decide to update their algorithms.

If you have been using techniques that are meant to drive up your SE rankings then you'll eventually be caught, if not already.

What If You've Been Affected By Jagger

If you have been a victim of the Jagger update, then you'll have to undo whatever the offending practice you were using and then apply for reinclusion into Google.  Here is a great blog post by Matt Cutts, Google software engineer, on how to request for reinclusion.