Importance of Home Page Content

Should a home page be continously changing

[schalk]

We have a fairly static home page, with content that very rarely changes, where as we are always adding content to internal pages.

Does Google put any importance to an updating home page, or should I not worry about this and concentrate on the rest of the site?

[tedster]

I'd say don't worry about it. There are some types of sites where the Home Page would naturally change frequently and other types that are relatively unchanging. In my experience, Google accounts for this and both situations can rank well.

[jetteroheller]

Should Shakespeare yearly rewrite all his dramas?

What a nonsens.

I have several client sides not changed since 1999. They are stable in the search engines.

The idea of permanent change comes mostly from advertising agencies to make more money.

Add content, but do not change good old content.

[Gimp]

Permanent change to the main page may be part of the business model. A news service main page changes every day, and more often than that.

Other business models necessitate changes often.

Google seems to take it in stride.

[trinorthlighting]

I would agree with tedster, we rarely change our homepage, but we are constantly adding content or changing content in our inner pages and google seems to like that the best.

[trader]

No one seems to know for sure about the serps value of a freshly updated home-page, however, I always wondered if making a very small change is of value? Such as adding a word to the title/description meta tags, or possibly changing/adding a word or two in the content area, or as simple as changing the copyright date from 2003/2005 to 2003/2006 helps, if in fact fresh content makes a difference? Any opinions?

I do recall at one time a SE (believe it was G) indicated on its search results page the date the site was last updated, and used the term 'last updated'

In fact, G currently displays a date next to some url's but only on the top results from what I can tell. That would seem to indicate it does makes a difference, right? humm....I wonder if the date associated with top-ranked url's could be a reason they are in fact top-ranked?

[trinorthlighting]

One thing we do if we have a new product is to drop a single deep link on the homepage. Google seems to pick up the link and index it faster that way. But we only do that about once a month.

[Quadrille]

Change for the sake of change never helped anybody, and no reason why it should.

Adding stuff, as advised above, is good. Revising a tired design or out of date info is good too. But if it does what you want it to, then keep your hands off it!

The key is your visitors; if you have a passing trade, and your home page works for them, then there's nothing to fix.

If you get a lot of return visitors, then there's two possibilities (plus a million in between):

1. They like it as it is; it does the job, it doesn't force them to look afresh to see where you've moved a perfectly good link. It works.

2. They are getting bored; you are not keeping up with your niche, your visitors, or your rivals. Re-evaluate.

You know your site. Hopefully you know your visitors and your rivals. If it needs an update, go for it. if it doesn't, why upset your visitors, and maybe Google too?

[Car_Guy]

This isn't a Google issue, but visitors who notice that a site is rarely updated will look for similar, more-current information elsewhere.

One of the great things about having a site (compared to printing catalogs, or writing books or magazine articles) is that you can easily make corrections and updates. I update every page on my 100-page site several times a month, because I think it's the right thing to do, because I enjoy it, and because I want people to keep coming back to see what's new.

It's my opinion that the best sites are put together by people who are really interested in the topics on their sites. They are also the people who continue to learn and innovate, and they keep updating their sites.

[tedster]

I agree with your comments about entire sites, Car_Guy, however this thread is specifically asking about frequently changing the Home Page.

Frequently updated sites may still have relatively unchanging Home Pages. In fact, one successful site I work with has a prominent link on the Home Page for a "What's New" Page. The What's New page is updated all the time. The Home Page just a few times a year.

[trinorthlighting]

We do a featured product type of link or product sale type. Typically a new product.

[Swanny007]

In my opinion you should concern yourself first with your visitors, not Google. Update your home page as you see fit. Google is pretty good at doing it's thing. Most of the time ;-)

What I do is put a static link on the home page to the new item in a short text link. It's a dynamic "What's New" section on an otherwise static home page.

[edited by: Swanny007 at 8:22 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2006]

[Car_Guy]

If the first page of a business site is a splash page with the company logo, there is no need to update that page, just as there would be no need to change the logo.