Will removing the main nav from the homepage penalize the site?

[WebsightDesign]

I have a client who offers residential and commercial services. We are dividing up the site into two sections that distinguish between these services and the clients. On the homepage, we ask site visitors to first choose from the Commercial or Residential services. I don't want to have any main navigation options on the homepage because they will change depending on whether you select the commercial option or the residential. Will this hurt the site in terms of SEO? Are there any suggestions of how to structure the home nav so it is not confusing to the visitor, but won't hurt the optimization of the site?

Thank you.

[blacey]

Thank you Alan, My only thoughts are that if a visitor needed to contact the company the first place they would look is the main navigation and if there is none they would be forced to select an option to continue, 'residential' or 'commercial' which may confuse or annoy site visitors.

[Click2Rank]

Ben that's a good point - I apologize for not saying so in my original reply - so in addition to having the to large visual links, or having two large boxes on that home page, having the Home | About Us | Home Products | Commercial Products | Contact Us  link nav on the home page would also be quite beneficial - both for SEO and visitors.  It lends credibility and usability to the experience.

[blacey]

The links I suggested are still important, and purely having two link seems a waste of space.

You would want to have a url similar to:

www.domain.com/residential-products/category/product-one

www.domain.com/commercial-products/category/product-one

Personally I dont see any benefit to removing a perfectly good navigation bar from the homepage. you could still have the main navigation menu as I previously mentioned but make the two sections for residential and commercial products prominent on the homepage.

[Click2Rank]

yeah let me know if you need me to provide any clarity for the design mock-up process.  glad to help!

[WebsightDesign]

Thank you Alan!

[Click2Rank]

The SEO best practice is that your home page should have links to the most important pages on the site.  So technically, just linking to each of the two primary sections you are doing that, given that each section's "home" page is important.  Except that means your actual residential services top level services page and your commercial services top level services pages wouldn't be linked from the home page.

Yes, you can mitigate the problem using a solution similar to how Ben describes. However, I recommend that your main Residential landing page and your main Commercial landing page actually be the Services page for each - literally where you describe those services AND link to each of the services through a sidebar navigation in addition to that sections main topbar navigation.

Make sense?

• Alan - Click2Ranks Search Team Director

[blacey]

On the home page I would suggest having a menu so search engines know other pages exists within the site, maybe something like:

Home | About Us | Home Products | Commercial Products | Contact Us

Maybe have a footer menu on all sites with: Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions etc.

In the grand scheme of things, not having a navigation menu on the homepage shouldn't be a deal breaker as long as you have an xml sitemap listing all pages on the site.