What's the right way?

[gr8whyte]

My SEO person wants my site to have a "leader" home page which then sends surfers to the original site. They claim that it is necessary for search engine optimization as they can populate text with weighted keyphrases. I claim it is an unnecccesary step for surfers. I've noticed that sites seem to be split between direct home pages and "leader" home pages (I don't know what the hell you call them, I just made up the word!)
Any opinions on whether this is necessary. I currently do not rank high and and pushing to get higher rankings.

here is the site: www.Sensuous-Nights.com
please be advised it is an adult themed site but not pornographic. Thanks!

[coder]

Most people I work with call them a splash page. But whatever you call them they are not necessary in most cases and will not likely boost your PR. However Inbound links and good content will boost your PR.

[Rob Moll]

Not related to your original question, but I thought it worth mentioning:

I noticed your link to pbskids.org from your "under 18" link and thought that was a "cute" way to exit the site (as if they would actually click it). However, I would think that pbskids.org would be appalled to have you link to them. I would expect that you will hear from them and they won't be happy.

I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, but from what I've learned over the past few monthes - that's trouble. I believe it actually will hurt both your SEO efforts and those of pbskids.org due to the irrelevancy of the link.

Do others have thoughts regarding this? Am I all wet?

Constructively,
Rob

[ADAM Web Design]

Elmo look GOOD in da fireman outfit! :)

(Had to say it.)

Actually, splash (although I like the word "leader" better...sounds cooler) pages tend to hurt SEO, not help it due to search engine emphasis on inbound links to a page.

All of your inbound links will be to the leader page, which in turn will send one-way traffic to your other pages. This may not seem so bad on the surface, but consider that the other pages in your site will not link back to your home page. You'll lose that increase in influence as a result.

Instead of

Home Page <===> Other pages

You'll have

Home Page ==> Various other pages

So your home page loses influence.

[greeneagle]

Tell them they obviously don't know what they are doing and find another "SEO person".

Ken

[rlrouse]

I've done extensive A/B testing with splash pages and found that a significant number of visitors won't click through to the "real site". They hit the back button instead.

[jawn_tech]

To support what everyone's said, I can tell you from experience, Splash Pages Hurt.

A company I work for -- when I reconstructed their website, I removed the splash page. The page was just an extra click for viewers who want to get to the bottom line quickly.

After removing the splash page, our site's traffic doubled in one month, and # of page views per visit almost tripled. The first impression can gain trust, making viewers (or surfers) feel they won't have to jump through hoops on other pages just to find useful content.