Is a "home" page important?

[LH]

Why do we always want spiders to follow as many links on our sites as possible? Isn't it important to get customers to the site and then let them decide which path they wish to take.

It seems the more links spidered on your site the better chances of getting more traffic, but then why we put so much emphasis on having a main (home) page if we work hard promoting backdoors. Just wondering.

[Mel]

Hi LH

Home pages sometimes seem to have extra importance due to the fact that many links to a site will be just to the bas URL which ends up at the home page.

Home pages are important from the design standpoint in that they should be a summary of your site and what the user can find there, and should offer a clear navigation path to your content.

But if you want to make the most effective use of search engines to to help viewers find your site then IMO you should treat every page as though it were a home page, and provide the content the user is looking for on that page in such a way that it searchers will be led from the search engines directly to the page that is of most interst to them.

[minstrel]

To add to what Mel said, the best way to ensure that the spider gets to all your pages is to create a sitemap consisting of text links to all your important pages, and then place a text link to the sitemap on your home page.

Then, as Mel said, if your pages have unique content and titles, the pages are in the index and people searching for keywords on a page other than the home page will find you.

[gary1245]

If you look at my site you will see a consistent 'Contents' area that links all but a four pages to it. Three of the other pages are links in the footer of the pages. This 'Contents' and Footer Links appear on all but one file (a PDF).

My question is, should I have a site map in addition to this? What would be the differnce between this navigation structure and my Contents area?

I can see needing a site map if I had many pages not directly linked to the home page. Am I missing anything major without a sitemap?

Minstrel, you said: "...the pages are in the index and people searching for keywords on a page other than the home page will find you."

Is this because searches go one level below the 'Home' page (or more generally the 'linked-to' page), but not further? Just trying to understand.


Thanks in advance.

[minstrel]

Is adding a sitemap essential? No...

Will it help? Perhaps...

Some search engines seem to like site maps and it's an easy thing to add. Down at the bottom of your page, you have small text links for Privacy, Corporate Information, and Links. If it were my site, I would add "Site Map" right there and point it to a page called sitemap.html. It's a small addition - it probably won't make a huge difference - but every little bit helps.

[greeneagle]

The "Home" page is just the main focus of your SIte. One that should be able to utilize the most important keywords in the appropriate density to meet the goals of your endeavor. Depending on what you are hoping to accomplish and how you hope to do it, it could be many of the page types below:

Home Page
Products and/or Services
About Us
Catalog
Testimonials
Purchasing / Shopping Cart
Downloadable products
Product specifications
Product features & benefits
Customer Service
Contact Us
Job Postings
Customer Login
Links
Privacy Policy
Awards
News and Events
Newsletter
Press Releases
Frequently Asked Questions
Site Map

In my opinion, it has been "out of vogue" for some time to actually title a "home" page as "home", that is, if it is a professional endeavor.

Ken

[toasty]

Going back a little to the sitemap issue, I was wondering if someone could tell me how many internal links one should have to the sitemap? I have a customer who has unobtrusive links to the sitemap in the header and footer of every page on the site. From what I've read so far, it seems that one link at the bottom of the homepage to the sitemap is plenty. Why is that? Is it harmful to have several links to the sitemap? I much appreciate the help!

[minstrel]

I don't think that having multiple links to your sitemap has any negative consequences at all, any more than having a link from every page to your home page has any negative consequences.

Many site do this. Mine, for example, has a "header" with links to my major pages, including home page, site index, site map, etc., on every page in the site.

This isn't "spamming" in any sense - they are simply internal links designed for visitors to the site, rather than search engines, making it easy for visitors to get back to important pages from any point in the site. The sitemap is included in that group because some people prefer to navigate from there rather than from an index page.

[Panky]

Why do we always want spiders to follow as many links on our sites as possible? Isn't it important to get customers to the site and then let them decide which path they wish to take.

Suppose your home or index page doesn't receive a reasonably good ranking in a particular engine for certain keywords or keyphrases, but lets say 4 or 5 pages deep in your site, the spider tends to like better and thus rank them better?

It doesn't much matter where a surfer enters your site as long as they can navigate and find the information they seek. Every page should be designed to be "user friendly".

If you concentrated on just getting everyone to the index or home page only, you would end up trying to optimize one page for tons of relevent keywords and keyphrases. This doesn't work well. Each page should be optimized for 3 or 4 keywords or keyphrases. This number can vary greatly, but basically, you don't want to overload one page for many keywords and keyphrases.