Some people say that using a splash page as your home page is a bad idea. And that's true. You shouldn't use a splash page as your home page for search engine optimization purposes. Search engines love content, and having a splash page as your home page defeats your purpose of ranking well in the search engines, if that is one of your goals.

A splash page actually is a good idea - if you don't use it as your home page.

For example, a splash page on a traffic exchange is an excellent strategy and it's actually one of the best ways to eke out results from traffic exchanges.

You can set your splash page as an extension. For example, yourdomain.com/splash.html. Then use that for appropriate marketing channels. A splash page works well to get a visitor interested in a site because it's consistent two-step marketing. Get someone to do something, and he is likely to follow-up on whatever you tell him to do next!

So go and create a simple splash page now and use it for marketing channels like traffic exchanges, classified ads, pay per click ads etc. Splash pages are uncannily effective when the situation calls for something less cluttered and more attention grabbing. For the traffic sources mentioned above, splash pages definitely fit the mold.

Hire a graphic designer to create a snazzy graphic for you to use on your splash page. After all, the goal of your page is to capture immediate attention! You can even create a simple Flash movie or even include a video there.

Here are the simple ABC's of web development.

A. Graphics

Graphics is very essential in web development because this is what visitors gauze your site if it is worthy of their time.

So what really makes a graphic to be effective?

First, the graphic should be small. Consider using images that are 10 to 12 KB per image because if you will use larger images, it will slow down your site.

Visitors to your site will likely to leave if your site takes too long to display so it is better that you use images that are attractive and easy to load.

Second, when it comes to graphics, you have to use images that have direct relation to your site. You would not display an image of Hollywood artist to promote the product you are selling, as this will cause confusion to your visitors.

Lastly, blinking graphics are not ideal in web development because blinking objects are really annoying and distract readers. More often readers leave web sites with excessive flash or blinking objects most especially when these objects hinder them from reading the whole web page.

B. Advertising

Advertising is lifeline of web sites and you have to handle them effectively to ensure success of your site.

When in comes to advertising, you have to remember two things, the number of ads and how related it is to your site.

The number of ads should be just enough to give room to other contents of your site. If they are overlapping contents of your site, then maybe that is why your site lags behind in web searches.

Next, you should only post ads that related to products or services offered. If they are related, your readers will likely to open the links to your ads but if they are not related the ads might not be opened.

In the end ads generate income but if they are driving your visitors away, then maybe its time to remove some of your ads and just stick the ones that are related to the content of your site.

C. Web Content

Content is also another essential factor in success of your site. It will be better if you have articles that your visitors can read on a daily or almost weekly basis.

Informative content will likely to increase your visitors as they will bookmark your site and then send your links to other friends and family members to invite them to visit your site as well. But for others to recommend your site, you really have to offer not just ads or graphics but rich and informative content.

For example, you are selling a product, it will be better if the site not just offer the products but also give tips on "how to-" like how to choose, how to use and where to buy.

Meanwhile, if you are maintaining a web blog, make sure that the site is readable and the topics being discussed are really interesting.

So you're considering building a website and you may be feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. While this can easily happen it is wise to whip out some note paper and write down exactly what you want to achieve and what steps you need to take in order to get there.

So the first thing you are going to need to do is put the foundation in place. This will require extensive research. Now contrary to popular opinion I start this process a little bit differently than what is generally advised.

Now while we all know that you need to find a hungry market doing this can be a little more difficult than explained in actual fact that is just like everything else when it comes to doing anything online.

Actuality can be quite different from theory. So what I do is visit the article directories. I punch in a keyword that I am interested in and see what articles come up relative to that. Then I check the articles out to see how many page views they have received over a given period of time.

If an article receives a lot of page views then I know that there are a number of people looking for information relative to this subject. I also know that if I write an article on this topic that it will receive a lot of page views and as a result get a lot of click throughs to my site which will help me get traffic quickly without having to worry about what Google and everyone else does.

Next I visit the forums to see what solutions are being discussed then I go back to the articles and check what the writers are promoting and see if it is a valid good product to help people achieve the goals they desire. If so then I make note of it. Now I feel a little more confident about building a site around this theme.

The next thing you have to consider is the domain. A keyword in the domain is helpful but not essential. Your next quest is hosting. You need a good host as this is your life line.

Finally you want to be able to build the site effectively so as to achieve good search engine rankings. Keyword research relative to your overall theme will help you to do this plus you need to structure the pages properly so that you site can be understood by the search engines.

Do not worry if you lack technical knowledge as there are site builders out there to help you overcome this challenge.

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