Splash page - is it possible to rank well?

[HrishikeshKarov]

Hi there,

I have a website with splash page - http://veda4.com/ . It's trully cool looking, the owner of our company wants the home page to be this way. But is it ok from SEO viewpoint? Can it rank well for keywords. All my SEO strategy were not using splash pages and I am not sure what should I change so it work with splash page also. I myself won't choose splash page but my boss trully liked it.

[johnny122]

Hi,

Your boss should think to the customer first. Most people don't like splash page. It is supposed to increase the bounce rate. You could do a quick test on several days to verify it.

From a pure SEO point of view, all articles I read suggest to not use it.

In my mind, only a viral splash page can rank well. I saw once on Flippa a splash page with thousands of visitors per month, but because of social sharing.

Regards,

Erwan

[egorpe]

This splash page is cool for the boss but from the user point if view it is an annoyance. One extra click to get to what I want. Every extra click = lost visitors. It make no sense from both SEO perspective and user experience perspective.

If you want to do something cool like this splash page, go and do a one pager HTML5/CCS3 parallax site.

[Chris.Menke]

See if he'll let you do a 2 month  test with a different home page and let him see the difference in the traffic/business and then let him make a more informed decision.

On  the other hand, the page that all your "home" navigation links go to should be a page like the one you wish your home page would be--a page with a bit more static content than the /начало/ page and one that other parties might link to instead of the domain's (current) default page. Develop your external links to that page.

In the market you're working in, you better have real, link-worthy, thought leadership-type blog posts regardless of what's on your homepage because it's likely that the majority of your search traffic will land on your blog posts--at least until you build awareness and strength for your brand. Don't blame the lack of traffic on the boss' decision on the home page if you haven't pushed really hard for top quality content. If you've done that and he/she hasn't complied, blame the lack of traffic on their business sense, not necessarily on the web site.