Much of the search engine optimisation of the average website concentrates on boosting the home page in search engine rankings. While your SEO strategy should take other pages into account, the home page is the page most businesses want to push. Approaching the search engines in this way is simple logic. Your home page is the face of your site and an easy point to focus on.

People often talk about search engine traffic as if it’s the only result. It’s not. The last thing any business wants is for a user to click on their address in the SERPs, take a look at the home page, and click back. Yet this is precisely what can occur if your focus is solely on traffic and not on users.

A good SEO company will approach the optimisation of a site holistically. It is thought that bounce rates already affect search engine rankings, and they may become even more important in the future. Making your home page attractive is not solely about your users, although they should provide the guideline for your initiatives.

Your home page needs to be attractive, informative, and easy to comprehend at a glance. Most users will give a page very little time when making their initial decision on clicking back to the search engine results.

1. Tag lines. Your logo is probably eye-catching, so use that attention to provide further information about your business with a short tag line. Five words is a good length for this line, and you can go up to ten words before it gets too clunky to read well. Your tag line should sum up the purpose of the site or your business, for instance ‘Providing search engine solutions’. The tag line is also a great place to slip in your major keyword for the home page.

2. Keep it clear. A cluttered home page is unattractive and a little confronting. At the same time, a home page without much content can also be off-putting by providing a sterile front. Home page content needs to be interesting without being too complex. This is a balance that a lot of businesses miss. Talk to your consultant at SEO Consult about well-balanced home page content creation.

3. Reduce advertising. If you are running an advertising placement package on your site, keep the number of ads on your home page to a minimum. This doesn’t mean you have to remove all advertisements from the home page, but make them a sideline rather than a feature.

4. Don’t be pushy. Your home page is the best place to draw your site’s users into the site. This means it needs to be inviting. Marketing messages need to be reined in somewhat on your home page, and any sales messages you include shouldn’t be at all pushy. Save the hard sell for your internal pages, when your relationship with the user has developed further.

5. Monitor, and be willing to change. User behaviour is unpredictable, and also depends on outside factors. Constant monitoring of page performance should be a part of your regular SEO routine. It can be very helpful to stay in consultation with your SEO company for regular maintenance.

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