Is it important to keep your website home index page simple to rank better?

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it  advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do  the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan

[gazzerman1]

_Firstly what type of tool are you using which shows up the errors in site code? I would like to check the site myself for these errors. _

I have been a coder since 1993 before most browser lol. I look at everything with my own eyes and just see it immediately.

_It would be maybe a lot of work to change the entire site in one go etc. _

Nothing wrong with doing it bit by bit. Google algorithms will however take a look at the site as a whole for additional ranking signals, so I would look at extracting that data and dropping it into a new template at some point. It is also very confusing for a customer to land on that page only to click on a link and have a totally new site layout.

Do you think initially it will be a good idea to get a coder to just look at the old site and fix any errors?

Yes the errors will likely all be the same or similar and should not take long to fix.

From customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages

That is always a good sign, however that may be a very specific audience and you might be missing out on a much larger audience who may hold less trust in a site that looks dated compared to other sites. Its all about first impressions.

_I have run a test _

Plenty of tools out there to look at things however they wont reveal too much detail just the standard things its looking for that most people get wrong. I assure you that the coding issues you have that need fixing are not the same as others. Even down to the broken google plus code you have in the top left corner. They will be pretty unique to your site.

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hello Gary

I just want to thank you for your in-depth appraisal is really appreciated.

If I may just ask you a few small questions, firstly what type of tool are you using which shows up the errors in site code? I would like to check the site myself for these errors.

Most of the pages which are not property pages on my site are linked to on a page called Whitby blog, which is link to down the side template of the site throughout. And then there's another section of that which is called Whitby history also linked throughout the site. All these pages are online and come up on the site map, which when I run it  shows 180+ pages. In my mind, I thought everything was okay in the respect that these are historical content which is found naturally through Google search and can be found on the website.

If I go for a redesign would it be possible initially at least to have the small number of business property pages redesigned using WordPress or something similar and keep the large number of old historical content Whitby blog pages in Dreamweaver site in place with links going back and forth between the pages as it is now basically.?

It would be maybe a lot of work to change the entire site in one go etc.

Do you think initially it will be a good idea to get a coder to just look at the old site and fix any errors?

I watch my Google analytics and there doesn't seem to be any significant change in the stats from this time last year.

I realise the site is old format and has been around for several years it's just from customer feedback they seem to think it looks okay for the products old cottages but I guess technically it's not the best now.

I  have run a test using Silktide Nibbler -  a free online service that gives you a good complete overview of your website with an overall score. And it did give the website an overall good score but did point out errors in the coding but when I checked some of my competitors near the top of Google for the money short tail keywords some of them also have errors in their coding. I then went to Google Webmaster tools and there were no warning messages.

Best Alan

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[gazzerman1]

More than anything that code is killing your site. Google recently really started to come down harder on sites that have errors, I honestly have not seen one this old with this many errors in a long time. I am sure you work very hard on it but it is very dated and does need a good overhaul. Its not a big task and can be done by a decent coder in a matter of hours. A good coder could fix your main problems in under 20 mins.

Not only that but sites are also being rewarded for their sites being coded well and for mobile optimized pages. So you lose out twice to these sites.

The content is great on the homepage because each property has a ton of extra info on its own page. The problem with many sites is you want to land on a page that has results right away and your homepage does that. You could always create a listings page and free up the homepage to sell your brand a bit better. Google will pick up on those changes and redirect users to a well optimized new listings page. maybe use this one http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/Whitby-holiday-cottages/ this way the keywords are in the url as well.

That page looks like its from an old design? Google looks at every page indexed and runs the whole site through a quality algorithm called Panda, issues like this can start to mount up, you must be aware of every page Google has indexed of yours and make sure it should be live and if so should have some consistency for the users sake.

I see 184 pages live on your site. (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.endeavourcottage.co.uk) Go through them all.

If I were you I would think about moving over to something like wordpress, dreamweaver is not a great tool anymore for noncoders compare to some of the others. Google is used to wordpress sites and they are built to be easily crawled for the most part and there are plenty of addons to do almost anything. I think it would be a good path for you and you would never need a code to do anything for you.

VERY IMPORTANT!!!!

IF you make a big move, design changes etc... Make note of EVERY page url, make sure that you do 1 of 2 things. Either build the new site/ design and KEEP the page names the same OR ask a coder to use 301 redirects for each url to the new url.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, your pages have a lot of history, links pointing to those pages etc.. if you change the page names you will lose all those signals that Google uses to rank your site.

Hope that helps

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hi Don

Yes I do find your suggestions constructive and helpful thank you..

I didn't particularly mean I was worried about losing ranking by taking a lot of the content off the home page, it was just that with their currently being only a small number of properties on this website 12 in total, I just wanted potential customers to be able to see quickly what's available and get to the more detailed description with one click.

I do realise that some my pages are rather long and do require a large degree scrolling down but I am going to check the old website out with Ergols suggestion  tool CrazyEgg for checking customers usability signals.

I took a look at your website and see the simplistic way.

Cheers Alan

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

I'm going to have a website designer check the code out tomorrow, so I'm taking that into action. I think ultimately I will have a complete responsive design done on the website,  I have been chewing this over some time, but whent down the route of if it isn't broken don't fix it. But I realise this is not apply to the Internet, keep up-to-date or start to lose the battle of rankings and website usability.

I'm going to have as you suggested more functionality incorporated possible expansion of properties in the future. E.g. customers will be to search by availability of all properties by date.

I presume the all info /guide pages which are indexed receiving signals from social media attention worthwhile keeping in a tidy order. And all pages which are no longer linked from the website will not be tracked by Google so I'm not detrimental.

I appreciate you taking the time to look at the website and to pass your comments there been extremely useful as always I hope I can repay the favor

[donford]

HI Alan,

If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you're afraid by moving content off of your homepage you may lose rank?

If this is the case I would not worry, you can easily create applicable pages and get them ranking with the same content. I am trying not to critique your site as I'm sure you have gotten a wide range of advise on what to do and what not to do already. What I would do is create an introduction about your company, list a few of your best properties highlights and redo the navigation. Robert hit on many things the can be addressed. To give you an example of a small website focused on one thing you can view a similar site I made here: http://rubberprototyping.com/

The idea is to create a flow, (with clicks (not scrolling)) to present the user the information they are looking for without to much searching around. A side note, having more pages while can be harder to maintain without a CMS (content management system) it is actually beneficial for SEO purposes, larger sites have a tendency to attract more keywords and rank better then smaller sites.

Hope this helps

Don

[EGOL]

I think that Robert makes a good point that the code underlying your site is very inefficient and having it recoded from scratch would be a great improvement.   I would do that if I owned your website.

Robert also points out that you have a lot of deep content on your site that most people never find.  I see about 180 pages doing at site:endeavourcottage.co.uk query from the USA.  A lot of that content is "historical" and "local guide" information that might bring in traffic and might be useful - it could also be dead weight cause some Panda risk.   So I would assess that content to see if it is:  1) substantive, and, 2) unique.   Then I would look at if that content is pulling in any traffic or if it is dead pages on the site.  Based upon that I would prune or improve and organize it into a small library.

I also believe that the persistent navigation could be significantly simplified so that it does not compete so strongly with the content of the page.

As for your homepage and site structure...  It looks like you have about a dozen properties and I do not believe that is too many to display on your homepage with a representative photo and essential information.  When a person lands on your homepage, my impression is...

"Hey... they have a nice selection of cottages.  Let's take a look at them"

The visitor can also click into the main page for each property to see several nice photos, full details and a map of where it is located.  That's my opinion, and how I would run this site if it belonged to me.  Others might disagree.  It is just how I would want to present my business, and I would have a way to rotate or prioritize the sites in the presentation.  This could be on availability, profit, popularity, or the advertising fee that you are paid, or simply a straight rotation.

If you had 120 cottages I would not list each of them on the homepage, instead, I would group them in some way by location, size, price or characteristics and allow the visitor to explore.

As you see there is a lot of personal opinion on how to play the homepage, but I think that most SEOs will agree on the need for:   1) improved code, 2) improved navigation, 3) an assessment of the content collection for substantiveness and uniqueness.

Good luck.

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hi Donford

I understand what you're saying but in this instance the description my website is at the top and it's simple,  it's about holiday accommodation.

If people are on the site to possibly purchase  that all I wanted to do was to make small descriptions to each property to attract them to click once suitably web page with more details.

Do you think I'm not getting this correct?

Best Alan

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hi Egol

I know from past reading focusing on your interesting and informative postings you are a great advocate of producing good quality content and I was reading one of your recent posts advising somebody on how to achieve rankings for the money shot tail keywords by producing good quality in-depth articles around the subject and indeed that is what I am currently undertaking to do for this website.

I think ultimately I will have to have a professional redesign of the website, but I currently just wanted to do whatever actions were necessary to try and improve my rankings. It has for several years been producing the goods overall and speaking to customers they don't seem to have a problem navigating to the various properties which is always about at the end of the day.

I was advised that I shouldn't have multiple links on the homepage or descriptions with links but I just wanted to keep it simplistic with each property description and link taking one click to go to the main page for that particular property

The template links which run consistently throughout the site just mean that people dropping from longtail keywords and are interested in the subject of that area may decide to book a holiday

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

[WhitbyHolidayCottages]

Hello Robert

Thank you for your interesting and comprehensive analysis but not been a web designer I'm not totally sure what you mean by multiple meta descriptions because I've been using the same structured Dreamweaver website for several years, which was set up by somebody else.

The top and side template is consistent throughout the site but the main page each have an individual meta tag and description.

Google analytics seems to be working okay I get usually over 200 hits a day on average usually on various pages throughout the site.

For the short tail keywords money it seems to been doing reasonably well for a number of years producing good results regarding holiday bookings

I would appreciate if you have any UK contacts regarding UK  SEO

Any further advice greatly appreciated

According to Google analytics average session time is 2.94  minutes, page sessions 2.94 and bounce rate 54% with 5107 users and 70% new sessions for the last period of the month. Does that seem healthy ?

Regards Alan

[EGOL]

The homepages on my sites have been influenced by what my visitors do when they land.

When each of my sites started, I didn't have much content on the site so my homepage had very few options.  Then as the sites grew I added more content options to the homepage and the persistent navigation across the top of the site and down the side became filled with links to category pages.

As I added more options to the homepage user engagement increased, and as I added still more options user engagement increased again, and again, and again.  Pretty soon, other people who have websites and strong opinions about homepages tell me I have way too much stuff on my homepage.   I can listen to them or I can listen to my visitors.   I picked the visitors.

So, what are your visitors telling you about your homepage?  Are you doing anything to learn how they behave when they land?  Crazyegg gives you the ability to see what they click.  It is easy to find out what they are clicking, what they are ignoring, what returning visitors do, what new visitors do... you can even see what visitors on mobile do and what visitors on tablets or desktops do. If you don't know what the visitor is doing you are just shooting into the dark.

You can use visitor information to move heavily engaged items to prominent positions, you can see what isn't being engaged that you want to be engaged and give it different wording or a better photo to see if that improves.  It is all about giving the visitor what he/she wants and enticing them towards what you want them to accomplish.

What's all of this have to do with your rankings?  A lot, I believe.

If you are giving the visitor what he wants that visitor is more likely to engage your site instead of bouncing, share your site, bookmark it, return to it using your domain as a navigational query or typing it into the address bar of the Chrome browser, click on it preferentially in the SERPs.   So, I think that by pleasing the visitor your site will produce signals that google is watching and that will help it rise in the SERPs as long as you have the basic page optimization and a decent navigational structure.

As for what to show the visitor on your homepage, you can send the message that "we ain't got much" or "you gotta click to find out" or "we have an enormous variety of things".    I have bet ALL of my money on the enormous variety because that has been what generated the most visitor activity.    Maybe your visitors are different from mine, just saying what I believe works on the small number of sites that receive all of my attention.

[donford]

Hi Alan,

I will focus a tad on the general question rather then an overview your site.

"Should my homepage be simple?"

I tend to think of it this way. A home page should be like meeting a new person, or a first date if you like. The idea is pretty simple,

Hi my name is Don
I enjoy online games, website development, and cooking.
I work at Columbia Engineered Rubber, Inc
My job includes; web development, IT development, and business to business relations
I live in Vandalia, Ohio
I'm 38 years old
It was nice to meet you. Do you want to know more about anything I said above? Click for more info...

That would be an outline for my homepage.  For a business it is the same, tell me about what you do, where you're at, and give me options to explore. When I type in a brand in Google, what do I expect to see? I expect to see more about the brand general information. Most of the time Google can accomplish this by serving up the Home Page for said brand as the top SERP.

So in short, yes your homepage should be simple. You don't want to hear about my 2 year bout with athletes foot on the first date do you?

[RobertFisher]

Whitby,

I think the reason it has taken a while for someone to answer is there is a long answer and a short answer and you really need the long. I am not quite sure what the tool is that you are referring to on Moz, but you have some issues here. I will ignore UI/UX and just speak quickly to SEO. First, never have an entire site that is essentially a single page.

You have multiple meta descriptions and it appears that each property has been coded as a page but it is not. The "H1" is over 700 characters and appears to be pulling from multiple places, etc. Almost everything is Bold or Strong. etc

I used a site: search operator and you are showing about 165 pages and I have no reasonable way of knowing how to get to them without using a site: (unfortunately, I am not your customer and they have no idea what that is). Your entire sub directory structure is odd to me as in some places you use .../subject of post/whitby-blog and others you use the opposite, etc.

I have to ask if anyone is looking at your Google Analytics or WMT? Your analytics code is not before the closing head tag where it should be and you may or may not be getting good data.

So, Given how you state they explained the problem I think they are at least worth a look but I would get a second and third opinion. There are some great SEO's in the UK. (Several are regulars on Moz and if you PM me I will send you a couple I have worked with whose work I can attest to.) You need some real help here if this is going to rank for you over time.

Sorry, wish I had better news.

Robert