Importance of text on Home Page

Splash pages

[gtate]

I'd like to design better looking Home pages, but have always been held back in the past by my understanding that a reasonable amount of keyword rich text is important for my small business websites to be found.

Am I right in this? Just how important is text on the home page? Can I let my artistic imagination run riot?!

Any wise words appreciated.

[wolfadeus]

My humble opinion: Homepage text makes sense where it is used meaningful and sensibly.

My own websites come with more than 500 words that often link to deeper content of the webiste; and they are rich in keywords. My logs show that this does make sense: Keywords get found and often, they are highlighted on the SERP.

Most of my clients are in the tourism business and prefer to have slick, clean-looking homepages. SEs are less important for them. I recommend about 250 words, linked to deep content that is particularly important for them.

You have to decide where your priorities are for yourself. "Free" traffic from SEs is not free if it comes for the price of a homepage that has a look you dislike.

[gtate]

Thanks for that Wolfadeus, your view coincides with my understanding of SEO. I was rather hoping someone might have found that if the other pages on the site have good textual content then you don't need to worry about the Home Page. I work with a very good and creative designer, and if I could free him from having to include a minimum amount of text on the Home Page he could come up with some pretty impressive stuff (obviously only for customers that would be suited to this style of approach).

[rocknbil]

A friend of mine across the pond had a look at our main page a few years ago.

"Wordy" was the term he used.

And he was right. When posed this question, he response also rang true: you need to find that delicate balance between what's good for your customers and what's good for the SE's. When in doubt, go with what's good for the customers.

Make good of your alt attributes, SE's slurp these up as plain text.

[gtate]

Thanks Rocknbil

Any thoughts on the importance of the Home Page versus other pages i.e. if other pages have normal text can I afford to have minimal text on Home Page?

[daveVk]

Look at your visitor stats, if 90% enter via home page I would be more cautious than if it was 10%. Also take care not to loose functionality. Flash pages often = poor content in my experience. Looking for a TV from major retailer site, plenty of flash, text on great range of tvs, not a link to tvs be found, not even link to pdf sale catalog.

[jomaxx]

I have yet to meet anybody who admits to liking splash pages. Why not let your imagination run riot on ways to display useful and usable text? That doesn't mean it has to be ugly, any more than a book with words necessarily has to be uglier than a picture book.

Put it this way: Something like 1/3 of new visitors to your site will back out immediately, without doing anything at all. Why give them TWO opportunities to back out before beginning to interact?

[piatkow]

A high proportion of home page hits on my site don't go any deeper. Putting an extra page between them and the main navigation menu really doesn't make sense to me.