June 27th, 2010 by Dan

There is a lot that your home page has to accomplish when it comes to search engine optimisation. In fact, it needs to accomplish an awful lot, considering how small the space is that you have to work with. The home page is used as a kind of intersection and an introduction, an advertisement, an information desk and a news section all in one. A skilful home page can ensure you achieve the conversions you want; a ham-handed one will ensure that they go right back to the search engine results pages.

The danger is that you may expect your home page to do too much. A lot of home pages are too jam-packed with information for any individual item to be really understood. It’s hard for internet users to easily discover the information they need. This is exactly the opposite of what a good home page should be.

It seems like an impossible task to get your home page to do all you need it to do without making it too cluttered. It is indeed a hard task, but the key to a good home page is to keep things straightforward. This might mean some thinning out of information, and some simplification of other information. It also requires really well-thought-out design.

Good home page design requires thought

It can help to picture your home page as a front room for your business. If you fill any room with too much furniture, it not only looks cluttered, it becomes unusable. Similarly, if you fill up your home page with all of your products and services, internet users won’t be able to use it.

A lot of your ideas for your home page will come from its design. Consider the physical limitations of any home page: a computer screen. Many home pages extend beyond this first screen, but anything an internet user has to scroll down for will not get as much attention. It’s important to fit everything essential in that rough few square inches worth of space.

It’s a good idea to think about home pages that have appealed to you personally, and to look at the home pages of the successful sites in your industry. Different industries do tend to develop certain stylistic traits, which are usually worthwhile paying attention to. This can provide you with a good guide for the number of products or services you can comfortably fit on your home page as well.

It should go without saying that your home page will be one of the most important pages for your site’s search engine optimisation. Happily, a home page is usually one of the easier pages to optimise, as keywords tend to fit in more easily than content-heavy pages. You can discuss home page SEO with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk.

The main thing to keep in mind for home page optimisation is to keep things simple. It will be tempting to crowd your home page with all of the information you need to tell your users. Resist this urge and your home page should work out well.

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