Most of time splash pages are uncalled for. There are only a handful of reasons why you may ever need to use a splash page on your website but these reasons don’t seem to apply to most of splash pages you can see on Internet. The worst example of a splash page is when a company creates a page and adds their logo with no content. They may also add a ‘click here to enter’ button link when there is no reason to have not entered already.

If a website was a printed brochure then it may be fine to put a company logo on front cover with no text to accompany it - however on Internet it is a bit of a no-no. Print and web are different mediums and as such require different approaches.

I say get to point and get to point fast, as you only have about 8 seconds to impress typical visitor so you don’t want to throw obstacles like splash pages in their way.

2. Create large file size Flash Intros

Its ill advised to put a heavy loading flash movie right at top end of a website, especially if you actually want people to read pages on your site. A flash intro can look impressive but used irresponsibly can alienate a proportion of users. Even for those interested in motion graphics novelty will likely wear thin after a couple of viewings so you need to offer a skip intro button if you use a Flash Intro Movie.

At same time you can make sure you do get value from any Flash motion graphics you commission. Think of a flash movie more as a commercial and they become more useful tools. Get intro made as a general purpose sales movie and you can put it on CD ROM or include it as part of any online or mailing list promotion.

3. Make pages full of exceedingly small text

Really small text is an often ignored but growing problem. Webmasters can spend time and effort creating content for their website, upload it to web server so world can see what they have to say, but then they decide to show it in a tiny font size.

There is a simple rule here; text needs to be easy to read if you want people to absorb your message. It’s respecting user to provide any content you wish them to read in a size that is suitable for web. Font size 2 would be smallest size you would want to use. If your target audience is over 40 then it is recommended font sizes are increased to point size 3. Do not assume your website visitors all carry a magnifying glass with them - keep body fonts at a sensible size.

4. Very long or complicated enquiry forms

Most folks have a million and one things to do, and one big reason people like using Internet is to SAVE TIME – so bare this in mind.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took on seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations of root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail in coffin, client informed us business was cyclical with busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming from pay-per-click program.