* Warnings: This information applies to commercial websites only – personal, government, portal, or special interest websites are not considered.

* The first page that appears when you enter a website using only the URL (www.thewebsite.com) is considered the home page, regardless of what it is called. Some websites call this page by other names such as “Welcome” or “Introduction” or “Input” or even “Index”.

* There are always two types of visitors to your site to consider, people (actual human visitors to your site) and robots (automated software, also called spiders or web crawlers) used by search engines.

Why is your home page so important?

Your home page is important because it is the page where the crucial decision is made:

Is this website relevant?

There is so much information and so many websites on the World Wide Web these days that the first decision made when browsing the website is always “Is this website relevant?” Does it cover the topic you wanted? Do you have the type of information I need?

For example: If you are looking to buy shoes, you can go to Google and type “shoes”. On the results page, you can find a site that is about the history of shoes. While on the right topic, this site would not be exactly what you were looking for.

As a surfer, you’ll probably flip through the home page and notice first if the website is about shoes. It will then look to see if there are any shoes for sale on this site. If it isn’t, or it’s not clear, you can skip to the next site on the list.

Search engines use your home page when evaluating your website to determine its relevance to keyword searches. In fact, it is the page with the greatest weight. If the word “shoes” is not on your home page, your site may not appear on the Google results page for the search term “shoes.”

Both types of visitors may use other pages, but often the crucial decision has already been made on the home page.

If your home page doesn’t provide the information you think a potential customer will need to make a decision whether or not to stay on the site, in a way that both types of visitors can easily and quickly assimilate, then your home page has failed. . your most important task.

If people never see your website, nothing else matters.

Your home page is critical to both attracting people to your site and keeping potential customers on your site once they find it.

Traditional advertising and business marketing are essential to the success of a business and should be included in all business plans. You should drive as much traffic to your website as possible by using traditional markup methods. Web marketing should never be considered enough on its own.

However, for most businesses, search engine optimization is very important. Search engines can provide a significant part of the traffic to a website. But this can only happen if the website is properly optimized. Optimization starts with the home page, as it is the most heavily weighted page for search engines.

What information should be on your home page?

“A concise and specific summary of the site, using as many keywords as possible. The summary should include the products and services offered, by brand name and in plain language. The main competitive advantages or main distinguishing factors of the company should be mentioned. company as any relevant restrictive factors (i.e., only wholesale or service areas covered) must also be specified.” Contact information is also useful on a home page.

In other words, both people and search engines should be able to determine whether this site is relevant to their search from the text on the home page alone.

Does the order of the information or the format matter?

Search engines rank the text in order of arrival. This means that the first text found on a page is considered more important than the text at the bottom of the page. Search engines also take format into account. Headers that use the correct HTML tags carry more weight than plain text. You should use headings and subheadings to organize and display your information according to its importance. Your headers should use keyword-rich, specific, and plain text. For people reading your home page, the same applies. Writing your home page “in order of importance” and using headings to organize the text makes it easier for most people to read and understand the information presented.

Flash, Animation and Images

What search engine optimization means is: “make it as clear as possible what the site is about, in terms that a search engine bot can understand.”

If you only remember one thing about search engines, remember this: search engines can only read text. Search engines can’t read images or text embedded in images, they can’t read text inside flash movies, or understand voiceover comments. Search engines cannot read text embedded in JavaScript or text that is dynamically created when a visitor requests it (text produced as the result of a database call, for example). Search engines can only read text in HTML or in meta tags written specifically for search engines.

This is important because it is very common these days for websites not to be written in HTML. Technologies like flash and Java script, among others, are now very common. It’s hard for a layman to tell the difference, as websites that use search engine friendly technology can seem indistinguishable from those that don’t. A useful test is “can you copy and paste the text from the website into your text editor”? If the text is written in HTML, you will be able to do this. If you can’t, search engines probably won’t be able to read this text.

Limiting the type of technologies that are not search engine friendly to non-essential decorative purposes makes the most sense for a business website. This way, you can have the advantages of these technologies (cool graphics and effects) without any of the drawbacks (such as poor search engine performance).

Is charging time still important?

Yes! The charging time is still important. There is still a significant portion of people on dial-up Internet connections. If your home page is taking too long to load due to too many images or flash, your potential visitors will simply give up and go elsewhere!

How to get to the rest of the site.

All the main pages of your site should be linked from your home page.

This has three purposes;

1) To make it clear to real people at a glance what they can expect to find on the rest of the site.

2) So that as few clicks as possible are required to reach the desired information.

3) So that search engines can follow the links to the rest of the pages of your website and index them.

Avoid using home pages that do not have text or page links to the rest of your site. These pages make it difficult for search engines to index and rank your site, and require people to spend extra clicks and time to figure out if your site is relevant to their search; in addition, they often negatively affect the charging time.

make an impact

Of course, you want your site to look good, and you want your home page to “make an impact.” But think carefully about what kind of “impact” the home page is actually having. Do you want your visitors to think, “Wow, what an amazing website? I wonder who the designers are?” Or you want them to think, “Wow, that’s exactly the product or service I’ve been looking for! I’ll buy it right now!”

What you can be wrong about is thinking that potential customers are impressed by flash movies, animations, music and other bells and whistles, when in fact most people are usefully more impressed by a fast loading website. , has well-organized and complete information, and offers the product or service you want under favorable conditions. -In fact!

The one page website. Better now than later.

In some cases, a home page may be all you need. Especially when you don’t have the time or budget to have a bigger website. It’s better to have a one page website done now than to wait six months or more to build a larger website.

These days, a website is often used for simple search purposes. Does this company exist?

Do they have/do what I need?

Where is it?

How do I contact them?

A well-designed home page can provide all of this information at a very reasonable cost.

Also, if you plan to have a website sometime in the future (and why wouldn’t you?), then having a one page website will give you a head start with the search engines (which can take up to four months). to index a new site).

by Candace Carter, Back2Front-The People of the Website