Splash pages

Can you have success optimizing a splash page?

[tgeye]

I have built a site and the owner insists that the home page be a splash page with a flash movie on it. It is not entirely Flash based and I can add Meta info but we can not add machine readable text to the body.

My question is, will search engines rank the pages based on Meta info alone? I realize that most engines don't even consider Meta tags important but the title seems to be important in Google.

Does it make more sense to optimize the real home page since I can obviously optimize it much better than the splash page?

[IanTurner]

There are lots of ways to success with splash pages but - not without any body text on them.

The best way is to optimise the main page and then persuade the client he doesn't want the flash splash. (This can often be done by showing SERPs for the key terms related to his business and telling him to find the first flash splash page.)

[SEO practioner]

I still wonder why some people still insist to have some flash pages, after all the negative things we know about them.

We have a few clients too that ask us sometimes. We immediately tell them all the problems and how they are search engine "unfriendly" but some still insist.

After wich we ask them: "Don't you want your site to be in Google"?

And then there is a blank stare in their eyes...

SEO

[liquidstar]

There are a lot of legitimate uses of flash intros. They are mainly in the entertainment industries like music, movies, and television.

If you ever work on sites like these, good luck trying to get around it.

[Skylo]

>>Does it make more sense to optimize the real home page since I can obviously optimize it much better than the splash page?

Interesting. I am developing a site of my own and I really want to use Flash. I just think it is really cool. So why not do just that....optimise the real homepage. That will rank really well and then only people who type in the URL will actually see the flash page. My site is based round local information and i am marketing offline and online. So all in my city can see the flash:-)