Your Home Page

Your home page is probably the most important page on your website because it is where most people will "land" if they are searching the Internet for something.

When you start a website, you have a theme in mind. The theme should be very apparent on the home page. (What is it about? What can I find out about here?) From this point on all information should "flow" in an easy-to-follow manner so that your visitors can easily zero in on whatever it is they are after.

I'm going to refer to your home page as your only "Level 1" page. It's at the top of the pyramid. From there, people follow your logical layout to whatever specific area interests them most. There could be 5 or 50 or 500 what I will call "Level 2" pages leading from your home page, each holding a specific area of interest to the visitors and all relating to your theme or "Level 1" page.

From your "Level 2" pages you expand further (if necessary) to provide even more specific information. This information will be found on your "Level 3" pages. (There could be hundreds of them.) Each "Level 3" page should relate directly to a "Level 2" page. You could go deeper if you wish, but I wouldn't recommend it. From what I understand, the search engines might not follow your pages down beyond "Level 3" for one thing and your human visitors might get lost as well, so if you want a winning website, try and keep it to 3 levels.

Many people prefer to build a "site structure" outline before they start their site so that they have an idea right at the beginning how their site will fit together. (You've likely seen outlines like this before. They're used in business to show how companies are laid out and who reports to whom. You know, The president at the top and then sales, manufacturing and accounting on level 2 and then salespeople, plant supervisors and accountants or clerks on the third level, and so on.)

It doesn't matter specifically what you do, but outline your 3 levels at the first and then start with your home page. (Actually, many of your "Level 3" pages will probably come to you after you have written some of your "Level 2" pages.) Right now, I'm writing "Level 2" pages but already I can see that I will have to expand many of them. Each expansion will become a "Level 3" page.

But what should it look like?

When you build your own website remember to keep 2 things in mind:

1. You want your home page to look good for your visitors.
2. You want these search engines to find it and rate it high as well.