Should I just have links on my home page or intro to articles

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i am having problems optimizing my home page for the words, lifestyle magazine, online magazine and lifestyle news. my site is here www.in2town.co.uk

I am just wondering if i have to much content on the page for google to understand that it is a lifestyle magazine. I am wondering if i should just have the links on the page and no introduction to the articles which i have seen here with a site http://www.femalefirst.co.uk

and i am wondering how sites like this are ranking better than ours when they have hardly any content on their home page

http://www.nelifestyle.co.uk/
http://www.lifestyle.org/
http://www.internationallifestylemagazine.com/

any advice would be most welcome

[ClaireH-184886]

can you explain more about the below please

Hope I'm not being too harsh here, but don't expect a magic wand in your situation.  A quick link profile comparison between you and your competitors is enough to raise an eyebrow, and the ad-banner/logo combo in your header kind of begs a bounce.

as a user what would you change, this would help me a lot.

Last year we were number one under the keyword lifestyle magazine, and then in january we were number four and now we are about 15 which is not good so we are doing something wrong.

some of the links above which include http://www.nelifestyle.co.uk/ have no content on the page so not sure how they are ranking better than we are.

We just want to make the magazine the best it can be to attract more visitors and to rank better as that works hand in hand, without ranking well we cannot get the visitors.

[SVmedia]

You know, I think you have your keywords in the right places that it shouldn't be an issue of relevance.  Just about every popular news site would be given an on-page "F" by the grader for general searches like that.  But popular news sites also have large amounts of natural backlinks/socialshares/etc...

Hope I'm not being too harsh here, but don't expect a magic wand in your situation.  A quick link profile comparison between you and your competitors is enough to raise an eyebrow, and the ad-banner/logo combo in your header kind of begs a bounce.

Not every improvement that effects rank is an "SEO" improvement.  If I were you I would focus on making my site the absolute best experience it can be for my visitors - both in user experience and quality of written content.