I have read many times that a meta redirect or Javascript redirect from a splash page is considered bad by search engines especially google, only 301 redirects are considered good. Also flash redirects... are they read by search engines? Lots of people wanting web sites designed like to have a flash intro or a splash page, so is there a work around?
No. There's nothing bad about the intro itself, it's just the lack of text (legible to spiders) that devalues the intro page. About redirecting, I'll choose 301 over meta refresh tag anyday.
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that means there is no Intro page. I tried searching before if it would be possible to delay the 301 by a few seconds to show a nice looking splash, so far I havent got any answer for that.
A splash page with only flash will look like there isn't any content. As mentioned above, this has no value to search engines.
We use this occasionally for search engine optimizing some of our clients' Flash intro pages. <NOFRAMES> method works just fine -- never had a problem. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>SEO For Flash Pages - Edit This Title</title> <meta name="description" content="This is the description of your page written as a 20 word sentence expalianing how to search engine optimize Flash pages."> <meta name="keywords" content="flash seo add twelve different keywords here found in your page content"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="yourjavafile.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="yourcssfile.css" type="text/css"> </head> <body> <div align="center"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3"> <tr> <td valign="top"> <!--YOUR-ON-PAGE-OPTIMIZATION--> <NOFRAMES> <h2>Search Engine Optimization For Flash</h2> This is some example text that you would replace with your own content for your website. It's best if you can use a minimum of 200 - 500 words per H tag. Don't use more than two H tags though. Tweak the title and META tags as normal just as you would any other page for your site. <p>Write descriptive content between the <noframes> tags as shown here; remember though, just because this text will not be seen by humans (only search spiders), DO NOT attempt to spam the content by over-stuffing it with a bunch of keywords, text links or other SEO attributes. <p>Be sure to create text links to all your site's most important pages and/or its directories too. It would help too if you added a few text links within the content, such as a link to my <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/red-widgets.html">bright red widgets</a> from a widget farm in Virginia. <p>My navigation: <p><a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/widget-gear.html">Widget Gear</a> <br><a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/widget-winters.html">Widget Winters</a> <br><a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/widgets-girls.html">Widgets For Girls</a> <br><a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/widgets-guys.html">Widgets For Guys</a> <br><a href="http://www.mywebsite.com/aussie-widgets.html">Aussies Love Widgets</a> <!--close-the-noframes-tag--> </NOFRAMES> <!--YOUR-FLASH-PRESENTATION--> <OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CE-AED-11cf-96B8-440000" codebase="http://active.macromedia.com/flash2/cabs/swflash.cab#version=4,0,0,0" ID=stupidwidget WIDTH=700 HEIGHT=650> <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="media/photoshow.swf"> <PARAM NAME=loop VALUE=true> <PARAM NAME=menu VALUE=false> <PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high> <EMBED src="media/photoshow.swf" loop=true menu=false quality=high WIDTH=700 HEIGHT=650 TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></EMBED> </OBJECT> </td></tr></table> </div> </body> </html> Code (markup):
Warning! I just noticed there's a phrase in the SEO instructions for the Flash intro that could be misunderstood... It's best if you can use a minimum of 200 - 500 words per H tag. In my haste to post, I should have corrected that as: It's best if you can use a minimum of 200 - 500 words of paragraph content under each H tag. You certainly would NOT want to spam the H tag with hundreds of words. 3 - 5 words only per H tag seems to work best.