SEO for splash page

17 years ago

no draw backs on that site mate, your images place an ALT attribute on them,and spread your keywords throughout your page and write around it into your sales pitch.

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jan roos 17 years ago

Ok, that is a generic splash page that I got when I joined my new business.I want to have a similar unique splash page made for myself where I can capture leads onto my own list etc. Can anybody recommend somebody that can make one for me and what would the average cost be to have one made? Thanks
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askloz

17 years ago

head over to 99designs.com, create a wire-diagram, where you want things placed, list some colors / theme ideas, and some other sites that you like found on that 99designs site, make your bid around 400-600$ to get the good designers in... but do your research first on how you should design landing pages, what makes landing pages convert well, etc and you wont have a problem.

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tim_buchalka

17 years ago

You should certainly do some work on that page.

A few quick things I've noticed.

No meta description tag. This is what Google (and other search engines) show the user in the search engine results, and not having one means Google will decide on what text to use to summarize your page.

The text in here should give a compelling reason to click through for the user, but should still have a keyword in it.

No H1 tag. This is a biggie. Make sure you have you're major keyword in there, but it should be focused on human readability.

Likewise for the H2 I see you have used, should be a smaller keyword in there.

Your privacy policy and terms links are disabled, I can see the text there, but no links. Would want to have those enabled.

The Title should probably be more focused on the benefits to the visitor, unless you really are trying to brand MyWirelessRep as your major keyword.

Got a typo on there as well. The Most Anticipate Launch in US History.

Is there any reason you have got those blocks of text as images?

Not sure if your planning to promote this with PPC, you don't have an opt-in, or is the PDF branded in someway? (I guess that's got nothing to do with SEO, more a marketing thing).

You might want to consider a bit more content, maybe a link to a few articles would be good for SEO purposes. You could add a nofollow to preserve the link juice, but would probably help ensure the site doesn't get google slapped if you decide on doing PPC.

Best of luck with it.

Cheers

Originally Posted by jan roos

I was wondering if splash pages can be Search engine optimized and if there are any drawbacks SEO wise for just having a splash page like this one? MyWirelessRep - Cutting Edge Strategies For Creating Tremendous Wealth Online

Thanks

Jan

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jan roos 17 years ago

The site I listed in my first post is a replica site I got when I joined the company.I want to make my own site similar to that one and have it SEO optimized. Was just wondering about the pricing etc.

Thanks for all the input
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askloz

17 years ago

tim_buchalka, a description tag is not really needed, a LOT of my sites don't even use a meta description tag, simply because I designed it that way so it takes the paragraphs of text I want it to, this increases the visitor a rate and the other keywords. Although adding one is common practice, but sometimes it pays to think outside the box, leaving the description tag out gives google no choice to pick the content related to the query, adding one, restricts google from choosing a better choice than your current description tag.

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tim_buchalka

17 years ago

Yes a description tag is optional, but I always recommend using one because you not leaving it to chance, which you are if you get google to come up with one.

Sure there are circumstances when not having one may help, but I would almost never recommend not having one for a sales page.

For content rich pages, that are ranking well for many keywords, yes I agree not having a description tag can help as effectively the search engine results are getting googles best guess at what is relevant to the query.

This isn't one of those pages.

A description tag (and the title) are the main things a user see's in the search engine results, and if your description sucks (and could well be the case if google chooses it) you're dead in the water. Especially so for sales pages that don't have a lot of real user content.

I don't understand what you are saying you leave the description tag out so it takes the paragraphs of text I want it to?

Google decides that. Leaving a description tag out actually takes control out of your hands completely and let's google chooses.

And Google does it better than Yahoo and MSN, do you really want to leave Yahoo and MSN to come up with a description? I shudder at that thought

Google screws it up sometime, and comes up with some absolute balony description text if you leave the tag off.

Summary: If you have reasonable copywriting skills, I'd still recommend using the description tag, as you will most likely come up with a better human readable piece of text then Google will.

By default I usually add a description tag so I stay in control. I like control

It makes me money...

But at the end of the day, if what you're doing is working for you, don't change.

For most people the description tag should be used in my opinion.

And for the record as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am definitely a "think outside the box" type of guy.

Cheers

Tim

Originally Posted by askloz

tim_buchalka, a description tag is not really needed, a LOT of my sites don't even use a meta description tag, simply because I designed it that way so it takes the paragraphs of text I want it to, this increases the visitor a rate and the other keywords. Although adding one is common practice, but sometimes it pays to think outside the box, leaving the description tag out gives google no choice to pick the content related to the query, adding one, restricts google from choosing a better choice than your current description tag.

Thanks

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askloz

17 years ago

Not really bud, here's the thing.

A normal presentation of a website consists of tables, rather than div tags, header at the top, with ALT tag, and perhaps a horizontal navigation menu, and or an optional left or right navigation menu system.
Now if using tables, it's advised, as most of us know to place the keyword phrase in your headers ALT tag, as with the horizontal menu, again related keyword phrases one want to rank for, and like wise for side menus.

Now, if the first 25 words and last 25 words on a page contain your main keyword phrase, and these 25 words are carefully created as one should do with a description tag (if one is present), then google will pick those phrases out with ease. BUT, having a description tag, 9 times out of 10 it will choose that description tag over your content.

If you know how google returns results based on the content, you are in fact in more control than you are lead to believe buddy. On some cases I've doubled my visitor rate, and have far more first page rankings using this method.

Using Div tags on the other hand, one has more control, absolute positioning the header and side menus, while keeping less code on a site, increases the speed in which the page loads, also an onpage seo factor.

I prefer to use Div tags, and as before, take my time in creating the first and last 25 words as if it was a description tag.

With a little bit of practice, regardless of what site it is, a splash page or a normal site, you can force google to present the text you want visible to the user. I've been doing it this way for years now.

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tim_buchalka

17 years ago

Or you could just put it in the description meta tag, and not have to 'force' anything.

Hey as I mentioned before if it's working for you, great. I'd rather have a custom description that i craft instead of doing it your way.

After all, what happens when google changes the way they grab the text? It has happened before, and your method does not guarantee the same result for Yahoo, and MSN.

Advantages and dis-advantages with both methods though, I agree there.

Cheers

Originally Posted by askloz

Not really bud, here's the thing.

With a little bit of practice, regardless of what site it is, a splash page or a normal site, you can force google to present the text you want visible to the user. I've been doing it this way for years now.

Thanks

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askloz

17 years ago

sure, you could do that and lose more visitors.

What is an extra 5 minutes out of your day to boost your visitor rate via the search engines? Sounds like a good investment to me if things are done properly the first time round.

It wont matter if google changes the way it grabs text, it will still and always will, pick out relevant words on the page, that's how search engines work, you just need to write your pages properly to accommodate that, it's not rocket science.

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tim_buchalka

17 years ago

Hi Loz,

I agree that 5 minutes is nothing (although in my case we would be talking days or weeks to update everything on all my sites), but your method doesn't guarantee a boost in visitor rates.

The only way you could truly test that would be a proper test over multiple niches using multiple sites for an extended period of time.

And it does matter if google changes the way it grabs text, it's not a human, it's a program, so it's going to screw up, no matter how you write your page.

For a simple example do a search for Mind Movies (US results).

Entry #1 returned should be mindmovies.com and it has no description meta tag.

Description looks pretty good.

e.g. for me it comes back as

"Mind Movie is a short 3 minute video filled with powerful affirmations, and emotionally inspiring images. By watching this video twice a day you are ..."

Now do a search for Mind Movies Creation Kit

The same website is also in position #1, and for me the description shown is

"e specifically designed your Mind Movie Creation Kit to make this .... Valued at $67, you'll receive this in your Mind Movie Creation Kit as a Bonus at no ..."

Google has screwed up big time on the result. Google the search engine with how many phd's working for them and their little bot screwed up.

I've been a programmer for 20+ years so I know the limitations with technology to get this kind of thing right 100% of the time. That's why I don't leave it to chance.

This is the only point I'm making, leaving things to chance like this is (in my opinion) risky.

My point is, you should never assume Google or any other search engines will get it right from a human perspective, because in many cases it won't. Was the result returned from Google relevant? Yes? Human Readable? Not really.

This is only a real simple example, I can give you lots of others.

But at the end of the day, I would agree that your method is worthy of a test, and I'm going to go away and do that again.

Last time I did it in any significant way was around 2004 from memory, when as you probably know, Google used (to a large degree) to largely ignore the description meta tag anyway even if you had one in there. Of course these days that is no longer the case.

They now use it more often than not.

It all comes down to the testing, and I fully agree this stuff is certainly not rocket science.

We've come a long way from when I was first on the Internet in 1992 with text browsers, that's for sure .

Thanks for the interesting discussion. I'm always open to trying other people's methods, especially when they have had success with them, so I will certainly try it out.

Cheers

Tim

Originally Posted by askloz

sure, you could do that and lose more visitors.

What is an extra 5 minutes out of your day to boost your visitor rate via the search engines? Sounds like a good investment to me if things are done properly the first time round.

It wont matter if google changes the way it grabs text, it will still and always will, pick out relevant words on the page, that's how search engines work, you just need to write your pages properly to accommodate that, it's not rocket science.

Thanks
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askloz

17 years ago