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search engines finding pages after the splash/index page

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Feb 28.2010

Didn’t quite know what to write for my ‘subject’ there.

I’m starting a new website for a farm market/vineyard. I’ve sent a mock up to the client so far. As always I’m adding all the tags, title, meta and keywords etc. Although, I think the client thinks it is quite nice she wants to have a ‘splash’ page that is just mostly visual. An image collage that will say it all to the viewer and intrique them to see more. My concern is that I know that splash pages are not good for search engines what about all those tags, title etc. being on all of the other pages. Won’t the engines index those pages as well? Why is the index page “the most important”?

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SEO

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@Eye_for_VideoMar 02.2010 — If you do go with a splash page you can enhance the SEO by creating the graphic element with Flash. Then use swfobject to place the Flash on the page. This will allow you to create alternate html content that will be indexed by search engines just like any other html text. That alternate content can include images, links, paragraphes of text, etc. So using a splash page does not mean you can't optimize the page for search engines.

http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

As for getting the other pages indexed, just be sure to create an xml sitemap that you submit to Google so it can find and index all the other pages of the site. Check with Google for exact details on how to do this. Then all those meta tags, title and alt tags, etc. will be covered by the spiders and robots used by search engines.

Best wishes,

Eye for Video

www.cidigitalmedia.com
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@catfishauthorMar 03.2010 — Thankyou, We have decided to not just use a splash page here but I do have a bit of flash on the page. I have it working fine but I have a couple of questions please. My temporary link is http://www.catfishwebcreations.com/Saison/alternate_flash.html

I use the swfobject-generator and it gives the option to add alternate content. I have added my image src here in case the viewer doesn't show flash content, also removing the bit about "get adobe flash". Here is my code
[code=html]<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="500" height="639" id="myFlashContent">
<param name="movie" value="seasons.swf">
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="seasons.swf" width="500" height="639">
<!--<![endif]-->

<img src="images/autumn_tree.jpg" width="500" height="639" alt="Saison Market Vineyard">

<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>[/code]
Should I have left the "get adobe flash" bit in there? It looked like this [code=html]<a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
<img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash player" />
</a>[/code]
The other thing is that when I first go to the page the area is blank/white for a second before the image/flash shows up. I don't like this. Is there a way to fix this? I also placed my first image as a background image in my css hoping this would help. Thankyou for the help. I hope it is not confusing. Very hard to write this clearly.
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@Eye_for_VideoMar 03.2010 — Good job on getting swfobject and some alt content working! As for the "get Adobe Flash" part, I wouldn't bother unless the site includes lot's and lot's of Flash. Almost everyone already has Flash anyway...The way you have it now the viewer will never know they are missing anything because you've got that autumn_tree image there.

As for the blank white spot, that's showing because it takes a little while for the 350kb Flash slide show to download. The best way to eliminate that is to use a preloader in the Flash. It's called a preloader but it really doesn't preload anything but rather it's just some sort of graphic that displays during the time that the rest of the Flash slideshow is loading. I'm sure you've seen the preloader working before... sometimes it's a spinning clock hand, other times it's just a bar that increases by percent, 20..40..60 as the rest of the file downloads....loading...loading...

The trick to making an effective preloader is to keep it's file size very small so it downloads immediately.

In your case you could just use a simple logo or something against a background color which matches the color of the page.

So in your slideshow Flash document, change the document background color from white to the blue to match the Web page background color... That eliminates the white space showing... now it's blue and blends into the page.

Then if you want, put a preloader in the first few frames of the slideshow. You might just put a small version of you logo in the center of the Flash document. It will display during the time it takes to download the rest of the slideshow file.

There are lots of preloaders out there so Google for more info.

Here are a couple that I've done:

http://www.worldbarefootcenter.com/profiles/adin_d.html

and

http://www.uncledoodad.com/10_03_09/10_03_09.html

I also noticed that on the bottom of the Home page in IE, the <ul> is over the top of the phone contact number down in the bottom right. Seems to display OK in other browsers but you might want to take a look at that.

Best wishes and good luck!

Eye for Video

www.cidigitalmedia.com
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@catfishauthorMar 03.2010 — Thankyou so much for the time you take in explaining yourself. I appreciate this so much when trying to work through and learn things. ? I'll make some changes. Thanks again.
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