Splash pages in web design: How do you maintain searchability?

Everyone here who might have an ounce of understanding as to how Googlebot works might clearly see that splash pages can hurt a website's SEO performance.

However, I happen to be dealing with the rather unfortunate case of having to implement a splash page for one of my clients. How do you do it without threatening my client开发者_开发技巧's rankings? I know it can be done, as some other major label artist sites (eg, katyperry.com, ladygaga.com) seem to get away with it.

--Dany.

make the splash page as a javascript/css overlay (like lightbox) .. the client won't realize the difference as he seems to be an * anyway.

If your splash screen has a link to the 'real' home page then the spider should follow it. And the better content on the 'real' home page should boost it above the splash in the rankings.

You could detect the robot from the HTTP request header and suppress the splash page for the bot. Most common search engine bots have their host address listed on the web.

This might be a helpful thread for you on Google Webmaster forum: Did splash page create indexing problems?