Comments on: Google is NOT making web design and navigation obsolete

By: Leadsmarketer

Leadsmarketer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:56:03 +0000

How can SEO and a search engine marketing campaign improve Leadsmarketer website (www.leadsmarketer.com) position in the search engines? Our marketing and sales department invested a lot of resources in writing all the content for our web site but we just canâ€™t seem to be ranking high enough in the engines, while our competition is on top. Do we have to re-write it all over again?

By: Web Design Guru

Web Design Guru — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:40:42 +0000

For me homepage has always been smth symbolic, it’s like the face, representing the whole object. And it can be obsolete only for search engine, coz it’s engine , but never for people.

By: Jonk

Jonk — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:55:32 +0000

This is a good post Patrick. I read that article in Forbes and I was outraged. I mean how can someone

a) think this crap?

and

b) print this crap?

The author completely forgets that the visitor to an internal page will also be seeing a page design, just not the home page design. And if you want people to hang around you’d better have an easy link structure. So for me I think it’s more important, because you have to make it easy for people to think stay, while not compromising the main content and the reason they have visited.

By: encryption software

encryption software — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:03:17 +0000

I absolutely agree with Keith!
“No matter what, people will orient themselves within a site, based on the homepage, thus making it an essential need from a userâ€™s psychological point of view. This explains why people land into a site, then often go to the homepage”

If your navbar doesnâ€™t allow people to find all your pages easily from your index page then the most of visitors will leave in frustration.

By: Laura Godfrey

Laura Godfrey — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:31:47 +0000

A website overall must be correctly structured on every page. It is very common that the initial page a user may stumble on is not the homepage. Therefore it is essential that all pages follow the same method. They must all have an effective functionality, a good range of keywords and the correct positioning of H1, H2 titles etc.

A designer tends to put all thought and effort into the homepage, thinking that this is the most important page. In essence, it is but must be carried throughout the website to comply with Google search engine optimisation standards.

By: Blogging Product

Blogging Product — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:54:25 +0000

I agree…makes site navigation more important…not less

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:59:28 +0000

Homepages lost their purpose years ago, and great sites have "re-purposed" their homepages. No matter what, people will orient themselves within a site, based on the homepage, thus making it an essential need from a user's psychological point of view. This explains why people land into a site, then often go to the homepage. Savvy web users, and soon all web users, regard the homepage as a type of brand and navigational view of the site. It offers transparency into what is in the entire site, and how the site owner "weighs" the content they offer. Think of it as one part sitemap, one part brochure, and one part tag cloud. I recently wrote an article for local, niche and small businesses about what the homepage truly is and how to organize content for it.

By: Ken the tech

Ken the tech — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:34:17 +0000

I’m actually starting to not give a damn on Google PR. On the other hand I like simplicity used by Google products and I agree that the design should be a few steps backward of page content.

By: Stever

Stever — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:30:28 +0000

It’s the design of the home page and navigation structure that enables those internal pages to rank for those long tail keywords. Proper internal linking to pass the page rank around, else those internal pages won’t get any search traffic.

By: Helmut Watterott

Helmut Watterott — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:17:07 +0000

All the pages and the navigation will need to be optimised as usual, obviously for all points made above. If you end up on a deep page thanks to a google search you want want to navigae out of that page to look at other services or products, not to mention that if someone is seriously interested in his website’s performance he will also market it in places other than such search engines, ie word of mouth, ad campaigns etc. I agree that this probably makes the ‘easy navigation’ argument stronger.