This page and the next one cover more from exercise 4 and a little of exercise 8 dealing with metatags. The rest of 4 as well as 5 and 8 are covered on the next page.

1. Splash page should not be made within a table because some search engines have trouble navigating tables. It should contain a single text based link to your mainpage at the bottom. This way the spider will have to crawl through your other code before getting there. A simple way to have your splash page transition to your main page is with the use of the following metatag which is placed within the section of your page before the tag:

content="10;URL=http://www.yourdomain.com/mainpage.html">

This should all be on one line with a single space between refresh and content. The "10" refers to the number of seconds and is followed by a semi-colon. Be sure to place the quotation marks as shown and remember to include the < > on both sides.

2. The splash page may contain a nice graphic but should load quickly. While we're on the subject of images, be sure you use ALT tags on all your images. Not only is this good sight design for the Blind (pun intended) but some robots can read those tags so be sure they are descriptive of the image and contribute to identification of your web site purpose.

3. The Page Titles on all your pages should be descriptive of your site contents. It is especially important that you consider using a likely KEYWORD that may be used by your target audience in the title for the splash page and your main page. Ideally not the same word as this could cause you to lose some points in your standing with the search engines.

4. Some site bots will look for the words "Mission Statement" and if the Directory to which you have applied uses people to list sites, they will find this really helpful. Be sure that it is concise, conversational but professionally stated. This should appear near the top of your main page. A catchy, short slogan that identifies your purpose/product would be a nice touch for the Splash page.