Front page SEO question

[sifredi]

Hi

In a redesign project I'm working with, we are concerned about the SEO of the entire site. The front page (root) is a very simple page with basically a header with navigation, logo etc and then a large list of inbound links that changes from time to time. This is a part of the branding strategy.

The site is very established since 10 years and has a strong reputation. Over 100.000 pages indexed by google with original content.

We are trying to optimize the inner content of the site, the front page is not relevant to optimize at all. The problem is that some "SEO Experts" say that we cannot have such a front page because google will "ban" the site or consider it a link farm. Some say that the front page ranking will affect the ranking of many subpages as well. The plan is to promote the inner unique pages instead of the front page, so we are trying to get as many inbound links from external sites as possible.

I have the impression that having a front page with lots of inbound links is not bad SEO at all. There is no cloaking going on, just a stripped root page with more links than content. But they are all inbound.

Could anyone point me to articles that brings up this subject or just give me some professional advice?

Thanks!
David

[Excellira]

Like [dir.yahoo.com...] and every other directory on the web?

Above site is indexed in G and is PR 8. Granted, they do have popularity, maturity, and authority.

[ZydoSEO]

More than likely your 'front page' (what people usually refer to as the 'home page' so as not to be confused with a certain Microsoft product) will always outrank the other pages deeper on your site. It's a fact of life. Embrace it and use it to your advantage. The reason being is that other websites are far more likely to link to your homepage than to various other parts of your site. Your domain name is much less likely to become a dead link than the URL related to a page deep in your site. A lot of uninformed webmasters simply delete pages when other sites have links to them rather than 301 redirecting and saving the links. Because of this many people link to your home page.

Also, be careful what you call inbound links. I sense you are talking about links from your home page to other pages internal to your site which are actually referred to as outbound links - they link 'out' from your home page to other pages. Inbound links would be other web sites (or other pages on your site) linking to your home page. You can't have an inbound link on a page unless the page is linking to itself.

If you are trying to push link equity to pages deep inside of your site I suggest reading Brett_Tabke's post on these forums at [webmasterworld.com...] related to Theme Pyramids (it's about 25% of the way down... lots of colorful pics - red and blue :). It changed my thinking about linking strategies for a site and how to optimize site structure around it.

As far as having a home page with not much content and mostly links, I am SEO for a commercial site that you would recognize if I were to mention the name, and our home page has been pretty much nothing but links for the last 10 years and we have always been fine. I doubt any SE would ever ban you or consider you a link farm for having many links to your own web pages on your home page (or any other page for that matter).

However, be careful about how many links you place on any one page. Some say 30, 50, 80, 100 or 150. I've heard all kinds of recommendations for max outbound links per page. Understand that a page like your home page has a certain amount of link equity associated with it that it can pass on to other pages (I'll call it X). The more links you have on the page, the less link equity each of those target pages will receive as a result of the link. If you have 20 outbounds, picture 1/20th of the home page link equity being passed to each target page. If you have 150 outbound links then picture 1/150th of the home page link equity being passed to each target page. The formula is not exactly that linear but it's a simple way to look at it.

So put thought into what you link to from any page on your site, especially from the home page where you have the most link equity or 'juice' to distribute to other pages. I've gotten very stingy w/ outbound links from my home page LOL. Brett's post that I mentioned above will get the wheels turning I'm sure.

[londrum]

if your site is already well establised and your users are happy with the page then there is something to be said for leaving it alone.
people might navigate in from your homepage and if you get rid of half the links then they might struggle to find what they want - especially if they now have to suddenly click an extra two or three links to get to the same page.

craigslist.org is an even more basic example of a site that is doing very nicely with just a list of links