There’s a lot in this blogging business where there is no RIGHT approach. Just decide and move on.
Today I want to talk about a recent flip flop.
I make decisions fast. I try not to sweat the small stuff.
There are many days I show up to work, get an idea in my head, and have it done by lunch.
Sometimes these brainstorms work out. Other times they don’t.
I’ve also flip flopped established protocols.
Take home pages as an example.
I’ve flip flopped on my approach to home pages many times over the years.
Two main niche site home page concepts are:
- Blogroll listing out recent articles, or
- Static home page with links to various articles and a separate blog page. You can hybrid this that also includes a list of recent posts.
The SEO purists tell you to do the second approach.
But there are many big websites that do great in search with a blogroll home page.
I believe this is an example of no RIGHT approach.
However, I also believe there is an SEO benefit to linking to cornerstone content you want to rank or funnel SEO juice to specific articles from the home page. It makes sense. Home pages attract the most links so it’s brimming with SEO power. With some strategic linking from the home page you can funnel all that SEO power to specific pages.
Will this double your traffic?
Probably not. But it can help.
And so I recently flip flopped.
For years I used only recent posts on all my sites’ homepages.
Now I have a static home page on my niche sites.
I use Leadpages for Fat Stacks and Elementor for my niche sites.
I use Leadpages for FS because of the email sign up forms LP offers.
Otherwise, Elementor does a great job.
I suspect WordPress blocks will do a fine job as well.
Why the switch?
Over the Christmas holidays, I went through Matt Diggity’s Affiliate Lab course ($200 off).
I bought his course for his SEO and affiliate marketing insights.
He suggests leveraging home pages for SEO. It’s an easy thing to do so I did it.
I include a clear link to the “recent posts” page where visitors can see recent posts in a blogroll.
I then link to my most important cornerstone articles.
How many?
I link out to quite a few articles… 25 to 30 on each niche site. Not quite that many on Fat Stacks.
While making my static home page for my biggest niche site, I thought it would be helpful to have a “Topics” page. This site of mine has 20+ categories and 100+ tags. That’s a lot of archive pages.
So I created a “Topics” page and list out links to all categories and tags. I believe this helps crawlability throughout the site. It’s also a good resource for visitors. I link to the Topics page from the home page.
Did my traffic double?
Nope.
But I believe it’ll help or at the very least won’t hurt.
Do I try to rank for keywords with the home page?
No, I don’t. My home pages are optimized for my sites’ names.
Therefore, I didn’t add a bunch of text or anything. Just thumbnail images and post titles.
I also have some links to internal pages with just text links (no thumbnail attached). I organize these by main topics in columns.
Do I put ads on the home page?
Yes, I do. AdThrive ads display nicely on Elementor pages. If you use Ezoic ads or Mediavine ads, they will work fine as well.
Avoid overthinking this stuff
The takeaway here is not that static home pages are best… for now. I think they might help but that’s beside the point.
The point is to not overthink small details.
If you want to try something, just do it. Don’t waste days or weeks reading about it.
There have been many instances where I’ve flip flopped. This home page example is one of many.
Most importantly, does it pass your sniff test?
Does it make sense to you?
Good SEO is actually a logical process if you have even the slightest understanding of how Google search works.
Most of us do.
Google wants to rank the best content for every search. It misses the mark sometimes but it’s pretty good.
Since Google relies on crawl bots, make your site crawl-friendly with sound internal linking.
Ensure Google knows what your content is about by using your keyword in title, heading tags in the content, alt text in images… all the basic on-site stuff).
It’s also good to keep your site good health (site speed, etc.). Check Google Search Console for errors and fix them. If you have Ahrefs, run audits and fix problems.
When we boil it down like this, SEO works:
SEO = Good content + Crawlability + Healthy Site
Yes, that’s simplistic. Good content encompasses a great deal such as attracting links from other sites, credibility, trustworthiness, addresses the keyword thoroughly, reads well and so forth.
But at the end of the day, SEO is very simple conceptually. If it weren’t, I’d be doing something else.
