A recent declaration from a Google representative seems to underscore the significance of the homepage as the primary page for Google. This perspective differs from the views held by certain members of the search community regarding the most crucial page.
While it is widely accepted that links play an important role in conveying the importance of specific pages on a website to Google, various statements from Google employees suggest that the homepage could be considered the most vital component of a website.
What is a website Home Page?
A website’s homepage is the main or introductory page that serves as the starting point for visitors when they navigate to the site. It is the front-end page that users typically encounter first and is designed to provide an overview of the website’s content and purpose.
Key features of a homepage include:
- Navigation: The homepage typically contains a navigation menu or links that direct users to different sections or pages within the website.
- Introduction: It often includes a brief introduction or welcome message, providing users with a quick overview of the website’s purpose or the organization’s mission.
- Content Highlights: Important or featured content may be showcased on the homepage, such as popular articles, products, services, or promotions.
- Branding: The homepage prominently displays the website’s logo, name, and other branding elements to create a consistent and recognizable identity.
- Search or Site Functionality: Some homepages feature a search bar or other tools to help users find specific information quickly.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): Websites often include CTAs on the homepage, encouraging visitors to take specific actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or exploring featured content.
The design and layout of a homepage can vary widely depending on the nature of the website and its goals. It is considered a crucial element in creating a positive user experience and effectively communicating the purpose and offerings of the website to its visitors.
The Importance of Home Page
In the initial stages of SEO, the home page held a paramount status due to the prevalent practice of acquiring links from directories and reciprocal linking, primarily resulting in links directed to the home page. Consequently, the home page gained significant prominence and power.
However, contemporary trends indicate that, for many websites (though not universally applicable), the focal points have changed towards inner pages. This change is attributed to the contemporary emphasis on linking to specific content, prompting a change in the dynamics. A longstanding strategy in link building involves directing efforts towards building links for crucial inner pages. This approach aims to enhance the ranking potential of pages dedicated to specific topics, ensuring that, for instance, pages focusing on ABC stand a better chance of ranking for ABC and related terms.
What is the significance of the homepage for Google?
It came as a bit of a surprise when Gary Illyes confidently affirmed that, according to Google, the homepage of a website holds the utmost importance. This assertion was made during a segment of the Search Off the Record podcast, which explored the intricacies of troubleshooting technical SEO issues on a website. The specific focus was on distinguishing whether a decline in traffic is attributable to technical issues or issues related to content quality.
In other instances, there have been occurrences where individuals extract a few sentences from a Googler’s remarks or quote a couple of sentences from a lengthy 31-page patent, subsequently making unsubstantiated claims based on these statements taken out of context.
Illyes states:
“First, you want to figure out whether the page is in Search or not. Because if the page is not in Search, then you already narrowed it down to two very specific things.”
In the context of verifying whether Google can effectively crawl the site, he proceeds:
“Usually I start with the home page, because I can’t speak for other search engines, obviously, but from Google’s perspective, the homepage is the most important page on the site, and homepage is a little vague here, because it can be the page wherever users are landing on when they enter your domain name or host name.
Like if www.example.com redirects to www.example.com/foo/bar, then that will be your homepage.
Check that because we, as in Google, will try very hard to index that or crawl and index that.
If that’s not indexed, then you probably have some problems.”
That’s a rather assertive declaration regarding the significance of the homepage to Google.
Various Aspects of the Homepage’s Importance to Google
John Mueller has articulated insights on how Google uses the homepage as a launching point for crawling a website to discover new pages. Additionally, Google measures the importance of pages by assessing their proximity to the homepage in terms of clicks.
In 2020, John Mueller echoed a similar sentiment while addressing a query about the relevance of pages linked from the homepage.
Mueller clarified:
“…on a lot of websites the home page is the most important part of the website. So we re-crawl that fairly often and from there we try to find new and updated pages or other important pages.
So what will happen is, we’ll see the home page is really important, things linked from the home page are generally pretty important as well.
And then… as it moves away from the home page we’ll think probably this is less critical.
That pages linked directly from the home page are important is fairly well known but it’s worth repeating. In a well organized website the major category pages and any other important pages are going to be linked from the home page.”
Mueller has consistently maintained this perspective on the importance of the homepage.
This viewpoint extends back to 2018 when Mueller expressed a similar sentiment. Responding to a question about the significance of the number of forward slashes in a URL, Mueller mentioned that the homepage held a status as “the strongest” page on a website.
This might imply that the reference was to the homepage being the most linked to and, consequently, the “strongest” page on the site. However, Mueller didn’t elaborate on that point, so it cannot be confirmed definitively.
Mueller said:
“What does matter for us a little bit is how easy it is to actually find the content.
So especially if your homepage is generally the strongest page on your website, and from the homepage it takes multiple clicks to actually get to one of these stores, then that makes it a lot harder for us to understand that these stores are actually pretty important.
On the other hand, if it’s one click from the home page to one of these stores then that tells us that these stores are probably pretty relevant, and that probably we should be giving them a little bit of weight in the search results as well.
So it’s more a matter of how many links you have to click through to actually get to that content rather than what the URL structure itself looks like.”
Google on Boosting Regional Traffic to a US-Hosted EU Domain
How Important Is The Homepage To Google?
I’m not asserting that the homepage universally takes precedence as the most crucial part of a website for Google, irrespective of its link popularity. It’s plausible that this notion is more of a generalization rather than an absolute fact applicable to every scenario.
However, It is noteworthy that several statements from Google representatives highlight how Google often uses links from the homepage as a foundational reference point to measure the significance of inner pages. Moreover, Gary Illyes’ recent emphasis on the importance of a site’s homepage to Google adds an intriguing dimension to this discussion.
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