Splash Page & Detailed Homepage

Hi

I am trying to talk a client out of using a splash page as it wont help them at all for their SERP.

They want the first page the user enters to be plain and have minimal text, therefore I thought may be a splash page with a detailed homepage might work. However, is it possible for them to have a splash page which will be ignored by search engines (disallowed/not indexed) and have a keyword rich homepage which the search engines will acknowledge as the site's main/first page?

If so, what are the implications?

If they dont take this approach then they will go for a homepage with less than 100 words (more or less) - Which probably wont help their SERP either?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

I doubt it would matter how much text you have on your homepage. It helps in the sense of the topic of the page, but other then that; links, and the title of the page would give google the overall topic.

I myself rather having more text, but if they feel they are willing to risk the rankings they already have then by all means, just ensure you do not get the blame for it

I see what you mean. So if excluded the splash page from the robots.txt file - would that make any difference to which page search engines will see as the index/homepage ?

Thanks