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
-
Getting 'Indexed, not submitted in sitemap' for around a third of my site. But these pages ARE in the sitemap we submitted.
As in the title, we have a site with around 40k pages, but around a third of them are showing as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" in Google Search Console. We've double-checked the sitemaps we have submitted and the URLs are definitely in the sitemap. Any idea why this might be happening? Example URL with the error: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/german-tutor/Egham Sitemap it is located on: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/sitemap-subject-locations-surrey.xml
Technical SEO | | TTYH0 -
Is there a way to get a list of all pages of your website that are indexed in Google?
I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of all pages that are indexed in Google and have differing opinions on how to do this.
Technical SEO | | SpodekandCo0 -
Sitemap indexed pages dropping
About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.
Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits0 -
I am trying to correct error report of duplicate page content. However I am unable to find in over 100 blogs the page which contains similar content to the page SEOmoz reported as having similar content is my only option to just dlete the blog page?
I am trying to correct duplicate content. However SEOmoz only reports and shows the page of duplicate content. I have 5 years worth of blogs and cannot find the duplicate page. Is my only option to just delete the page to improve my rankings. Brooke
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Duplicate Content - Home Page even wth Mod Rewrite 301
Hi, It looks like Seomoz (and Screaming Frog) is showing my home page as duplicate content. http://www.mydomain.com Page Authority 61 Linking root Domain 321 http://www.mydomain.com/ Page Authority 61 Linking root Domain 321 [Screaming Frog shows duplicate as]
Technical SEO | | Force7
www.mydomain.com/
www.mydomain.com/index.html} Years ago I hired someone to write the code for a rewrite for non www to be 301 redirected to www version. I was surprised at finding out that I still have a problem. Here is the code on my htaccess page. <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule> Was this code not properly written ? One more question, we were hit hard by Panda and Penguin, would something like this be that much of a factor. Thanks in advance, Force70 -
2 home page domains causing split in link juice
We have 2 home page domains that are resulting in a split in links. We have mysite.com and mysite.com/index.php. The site is on Joomla and when we try and re-direct the /index.php to just mysite.com is causing an infinite loop. I have done this on other platforms with no problems - is this an issue because of Joomla? How can we complete a 301 re-direct to consolidate our link juice to one domain url?
Technical SEO | | devonkrusich0 -
Getting a citation page indexed
Howdy mozzers, I have a citation on a .govt domain with 2 links pointing to my site. The page is not indexed by Google, bing or yahoo. URL; http://www.familyservices.govt.nz/directory/viewprovider.htm?id=17077 I have tried getting the paged indexed by building bookmark links to it. I have tweeted the url and gotten a few re-tweets for it. But no luck. The page has got no nofollow meta tag. Other listings have been indexed by google. Could someone please advise on means to help me get the page indexed? A strategy that I have not yet tried is submitting a sitemap that includes the external url as I am not sure if it is possible to include url's not part of my domain. Any advice, help would be greatly appreciated. viva le SEOmoz Thanks
Technical SEO | | ihms1 -
Existing Pages in Google Index and Changing URLs
Hi!! I am launching a newly recoded site this week and had a another noobie question. The URL structure has changed slightly and I have installed a 301 redirect to take care of that. I am wondering how Google will handle my "old" pages? Will they just fall out of the index? Or does the 301 redirect tell Google to rewrite the URLs in the index? I am just concerned I may see an "old" page and a "new" page with the same content in the index. Just want to make sure I have covered all my bases. Thanks!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0