Different Header on Home Page vs Sub pages

[Waismann]

Hello,

I am an SEO/PPC manager for a company that does a medical detox. You can see the site in question here: http://opiates.com. My question is, I've never heard of it specifically being a problem to have a different header on the home page of the site than on the subpages, but I rarely see it either. Most sites, if i'm not mistaken, use a consistent header across most of the site. However, a person i'm working for now said that she has had other SEO's look at the site (above) and they always say that it is a big SEO problem to have a different header on the homepage than on the subpages. Any thoughts on this subject? I've never heard of this before.

Thanks,

Jesse

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Jesse,

I could see why some people would argue that you should have a consistent design across all your templates on the site including your homepage. The homepage is in most cases the most linked to page on your site and based on that has the highest authority. By having some important links not on there it could be that you're not passing on some of the value/ authority that the homepage has.

[BenjaminMorel]

i wouldn't think it would be an SEO problem to have a different header on your subpages to your homepage. There are some companies who have done this to good effect. Dropbox is a good example; they have no navigation on their homepage but do on other pages. There are also plenty of people who change their headers on landing pages and during the checkout, to remove the distraction of a menu.

However there may well be development problems, depending on what platform you're using. And from the users point of view, what is the benefit of having different navigation in different places on the site? Or are they likely to get confused?