SEO pros - need some advice

I'm trying to help a friend by doing some SEO work on his business site, and came across something I don't know the answer to. Here's a little background - the site is several years old, is already indexed, but is not optimized at all. My research tells me there is plenty of opportunity to get him to the top of the Google SERPs (mainly because this is specific to his locale).

Here's the issue - the current default page of the site is a 10 second flash animation that eventually redirects to the 'actual' main page, which resides at domain/site. So, if you go to xyzcompany.com, you have a delay before being forwarded to xyzcompany.com/site, which is the root of the site. I don't like this set-up at all, but don't want to start screwing around with indexed pages if I can avoid it.

Here's the question: when building backlinks for the primary keyword, should the link point to the domain (xyzcompany.com), or to the 'real' homepage (xyzcompany.com/site)? Eventually you end up at the same spot, but I don't know how (or if) Google would treat those links differently.

Any thoughts or ideas? Anyone run into this in the past? I'd like to drop the flash page completely, but don't know what the impact of moving things around would be. Thanks in advance for any ideas, suggestions, etc.

Sounds like you could be getting a cunundrum. Go to Google webmaster tools and set the site you want to build links to as the main page. Then Google will recognize that page as the page you want.

Make sure you fix the cunundrum. After that start building content. and getting links to the page your trying to promote as your main page.

First off I just want to say 'Cunundrum.' It's a cool word.

Second, if the site is indexed but not optimized at all yet, then what's the big deal if you simply get rid of the stupid flash animation and change the root? It's going to take time anyways for your optimizations to take effect.

You'll be fine imo

victoriavain & ForeverNever, thanks for the responses.

ForeverNever, I think your suggestion makes perfect sense - just change the virtual directory and bypass the flash page completely. I'll have to check with his hosting company, as I am not sure how they are set up. Thanks for the thought - so simple that I overlooked it.

If it was me and I didn't risk loosing my SERPS then I would just put it the way that you feel would be most benificial. Don't think you have anything to lose. Unless the client doesn't want to drops in the SERPS.

Can anybody tell if we take that flash page as a homepage and promote that page so Google will not having any problems in indexing those pages.