Importance of an optimized home page (index)
-
I'm helping a client redesign their website and they want to have a home page that's primarily graphics and/or flash (or jquery). If they are able to optimize all of their key sub-pages, what is the harm in terms of SEO?
-
No, that's not correct. Think about the way link juice flows as well. Remember that it is the professionals who say neither of these practices are good. If you want a good strong SEO position, you need to avoid these practices.
-
Just from my own sites...
Most profitable can be one of three things....
A) Highest sales volume
B) Best profit margin
C) Items that are easy to obtain, inventory and deliver (low labor)
If I had a client, I would talk to her and ask what she can sell a lot of and what she enjoys moving.
Where you can get SERP position based upon competition levels is also a part of this.
-
If I'm hearing you correctly, you are saying that while not recommended, it's possible to have a good SEO program for deep pages, while not optimizing the home page. Is that accurate?
-
Thank you Egol. How do you determine which keywords are most profitable? Is it something that the client figures out overtime, or is there a way to determine "profitability" before the SEO process begins?
-
As EGOl and iNet state, using flash for a homepage isn't a great idea.
You will need links outside of the flash to ensure crawlers find deeper pages.
If you do optimise sub level pages over the homepage, then fancy homepage flash become inert as most visitors are going to land on sub pages, by passing the homepage.
Include Flash by all means, but make it a page element, not the entire page.
Jquery on the other hand is awesome and if done correctly will not hinder your SEO.
-
Google will tell you not to have sites that are image heavy or that have content buried so that they cannot easily crawl / read it.
Steer well clear of both of these possibilities as neither will benefit your customer. Also remember that Google also uses page load speed as a metric as well.
Regards,
Andy
-
For many sites the homepage brings in more traffic than any other page. Also the homepage is usually the strongest page on a site and that gives it the ability to attack the most difficult (and often most profitable) keywords. Not using the homepage would be like not using your best sword.
Maybe there is a way that you can include flash elements on the page and still have space left for optimized text?
Or, better, have a homepage that has a number of enticing links that will pull the visitor deeper into the site and engage them with more information.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Removing indexed pages
Hi all, this is my first post so be kind 🙂 - I have a one page Wordpress site that has the Yoast plugin installed. Unfortunately, when I first submitted the site's XML sitemap to the Google Search Console, I didn't check the Yoast settings and it submitted some example files from a theme demo I was using. These got indexed, which is a pain, so now I am trying to remove them. Originally I did a bunch of 301's but that didn't remove them from (at least not after about a month) - so now I have set up 410's - These also seem to not be working and I am wondering if it is because I re-submitted the sitemap with only the index page on it (as it is just a single page site) could that have now stopped Google indexing the original pages to actually see the 410's?
Technical SEO | | Jettynz
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.0 -
Google Webmaster tools Sitemap submitted vs indexed vs Index Status
I'm having an odd error I'm trying to diagnose. Our Index Status is growing and is now up to 1,115. However when I look at Sitemaps we have 763 submitted but only 134 indexed. The submitted and indexed were virtually the same around 750 until 15 days ago when the indexed dipped dramatically. Additionally when I look under HTML improvements I only find 3 duplicate pages, and I ran screaming frog on the site and got similar results, low duplicates. Our actual content should be around 950 pages counting all the category pages. What's going on here?
Technical SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Page that appears on SERPs is not the page that has been optimized for users
This may seem like a pretty newbie question, but I haven't been able to find any answers to it (I may not be looking correctly). My site used to rank decently for the KW "Gold name necklace" with this page in the search results:http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=302This was the page that I was working on optimizing for user experience (load time, image quality, ease of use, etc.) since this page was were users were getting to via search. A couple months ago the Google SERP's started showing this page for the same query (also ranked a little lower, but not important for this specific question):http://www.mynamenecklace.co.uk/Products.aspx?p=314Which is a white gold version of the necklaces. This is not what most users have in mind (when searching for gold name necklace) so it's much less effective and engaging.How do I tell Google to go back to old page/ give preference to older page / tell them that we have a better version of the page / etc. without having to noindex any of the content? Both of these pages have value and are for different queries, so I can't canonical them to a single page. As far as external links go, more links are pointing to the Yellow gold version and not the white gold one.Any ideas on how to remedy this?Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Don340 -
My blog homepage deindexed, other pages indexing, still traffic not changed.
Hello! Today when I check my blog site search on Google, I can't see my blog home page. Though all my posts and pages are still on the Google results. Today I published a test post, then it also indexed by the Google less than 3 minutes. Still I can't see any traffic changes. 10th of April (yesterday) when I perform a site search (site:mydomain.com), I saw my site on the Google search result. Today I installed the Ulitmate SEO plug-in and deactivated WordPress SEO plug-in. After a few hours I saw this issue. (I'm not saying this is the issue, I just mentioned it). In addition to that I never used any black hat SEO methods to improve my ranking. my site:- http://goo.gl/6mvQT Any help really appreciate!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Does our new home page design look better and better for seo
Hi, i would like to know if our new design for our home www.in2town.co.uk page looks better than it did. We are trying to target the keyword for lifestyle magazine and lifestyle news. We are wondering if we should add more colour or graphics to the home page. we are going through each section of the site to make it a more enjoyable experience for our readers. If anyone can give us advice on keeping people on the page and using different social media techniques then that would be great. Through some excellent advice on here we are going to be starting a facebook page
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Pages not indexed by Google
We recently deleted all the nofollow values on our website. (2 weeks ago) The number of pages indexed by google is the same as before? Do you have explanations for this? website : www.probikeshop.fr
Technical SEO | | Probikeshop0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
Properly Moving Blog from Index to its Own Page
Right now I have a website that is exclusively a blog. I want to create pages outside of the blog and move the blog to a page other than the index file e.g.) from domain.com to domain.com/blog I will have the blog post pages stay in the root directory. e.g.) domain.com/blog-post Any suggestions how to properly tell SE's and other websites that the blog has moved?
Technical SEO | | Bartell0