I'll be the first to admit that I'm closer to a developer than I am to an artist. I find innovative ways to deliver on the promise posed by a strong online presence. While there is graphic design involved in the process, with SEO a constant source of aggravation for my clients, I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to a website design. One of the most common "arguments" i have with my graphic designers is balancing beauty with intent. A beautiful website is a wonderful thing, but if that beauty interferes with the core function of a website (to inform, communicate, and sell a product or service) then it is a failure.

Finding the balance between form and function is tricky, but one thing is always easy for me. Doing away with "splash pages."

Since search engines use the top-level URL to rank a website, moving your site to a secondary level (for instance /home/yourhomepage/aftersplash/ or any other nested directory structure) will invariably hurt your page rankings. I'm often surprised when someone willingly sabotages the primary goal of a website through poor SEO practices. Here are the 5 main reasons why I try to steer my clients away from splash pages:

1.When a picture is not worth a thousand words. Without text, text-based web crawlers can't index your site's content appropriately. If the first page they encounter is light on text-based information, your site is essentially invisible to search engines.

2. Keywords are king. A splash page rarely has much in the way of text other than a "skip intro" or "enter here" link. There aren't very many words that are as worthless to site ranking than these.

3. Links never lie. Links are the currency of search engine ranking. A typical splash page has one link which goes to your home page and normally, a person encounters your splash page just once. Every visit thereafter will annoy your visitors if they always end up on a worthless page. They'll typically link to the main content area where your navigation resides, never returning to the splash page. Web crawlers don't work that way. In terms of SEO, splash pages are a complete waste of your best online real estate.

4. Giving them the run-around. Google and Yahoo!, the two most popular search engines, want to give the people what they want, and they want the content linked in the search engine. When they see that your base-level URL is redirecting to another page, your site's ranking will be affected negatively.

5. Faster pussycat, faster! Page load time is a now a major factor in search rankings and graphic heavy splash pages (or worse, flash heavy splash pages) tend to slow down load times. If your site loads slowly, your search ranking will suffer.