Yesterday’s big, fat, $5 New York Times had a nice tasty article on Google’s secret sauce: their search algorithms. Actually, it was mostly about how nobody really knows what actually goes on inside the secret Google box, not even Rupert Murdoch.
But something that caught my eye in the article was this telling statistic:
And media sites are discovering that many people are ignoring their home pages — where ad rates are typically highest — and using Google to jump to the specific pages they want.
Since our first conference in 2004, we’ve been saying the home page is dead. It still bears repeating: The Home Page Is Dead. People are jumping (slightly annoyed) right past it, to where all your useful content is.
Coincidentally, the best way to get 90% of your information into the hands of your customers every time they hit your site is to make your “home page” a blog. Permalinks let Google guide users to specific answers when they want specifics, and clicking on your domain brings them a wealth of up-to-date information framed by your sidebars.
When people stop landing on useless “home pages” and start showing up at dynamic, useful blog pages, your traffic will spike, Google will crawl your site more often, and people will end up happier. Everybody wins–except possibly Rupert Murdoch, who just lost some MySpace traffic to your business.
We’re going to cover the how-to’s and what-nots of building a useful “home-page” blog at the next summit. Make sure you’re there to check it out.
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Joseph Thornley 06.04.07 at 6:17 pm
“…make your “home page” a blog.” You are so right.
We made our employee blogs the centrepiece of the Thornley Fallis Website last October. We immediately saw a lift in traffic as people read through to the blogs and back to the Website. Other bloggers discovered our newer and less popular blogs. And even more important, potential employees and potential clients began to greet our bloggers with variations of, “I read your blog and really like what you have to say. Let’s talk…”
We put the people who make up the company on the public face of the company - the home page - and our company began to have a warm, personal, human face.
Matt Ambrose 06.06.07 at 3:52 am
I’ve found that I now no longer have a choice. Somehow Ive managed to get my blog onto the first page of Google for term ‘copywriter’ but it links to my blog, The Copywriter’s Crucible, rather than my business home page, The Write Words.
This means at the moment Im losing potential clients looking for a business service rather than a blog. Not all bad news I gues - I’m just going to have to rebuild my site around wordpress and find a way of satisfying both visitors.
If you’re able to point me to any blogs which also act effectively as busines home pages I’d much appreciate it?
Jason Preston 06.06.07 at 9:34 am
Matt - that’s the nature of blogs: they find the top of search rankings like ants find watermelon. Having potential clients land on your blog is a lot better than having them land on competitors web sites, so step one completed.
I’d like to be a little glib and point you to BlogBusinessSummit.com - I think we do a good job of running blogs as our ONLY company sites. Or, for example, check out the Thornley Fallis home site from Joseph, who commented above.
And if you need help rebuilding your site in WP, let us know - we do that sort of thing.
Business Education 06.06.07 at 10:14 pm
My website homepage don’t use blog. It created using static html. because I think people have different purpose on building home page. my home page have function as website directory, where everything goes from there. Sometime people directly come to content from search engine. I don’t mind if they do so. However I still put navigation bar and email marketing strategy to make them comeback see our other pages.