Homepage with little or no text

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Homepage with little or no text

spirelli

5:59 am on Aug 4, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hi everyone,

We've got a homepage without text – just two links that point to the two main sections of the site.

Each of the two sections that the homepage links to have distinct (although related) offers. The intention was to get Google & Co to refer to the section landing page, and therefore optimise those.

However, the question that's come up is whether it is detrimental to the 'findability' of the site not to have any text of description of the general theme of the business. Sure enough, the site title has the business name that also includes keywords, but is that okay? Will the 'rest' (=bulk) of the site, as well as the local business listing with Google, give enough juice?

We really like the minimalist landing page that directs visitors without delay to the most relevant section. But is that a 'bad' homepage in SEO terms?

[edited by: engine at 8:42 am (utc) on Aug 4, 2021]
[edit reason] no specifcs, thanks, please see WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]

lucy24

4:06 pm on Aug 4, 2021 (gmt 0)

Worst-case scenario: G### will treat the textless home page as a “soft 404” (a designation originally used for bad habits like redirecting 404s to the home page, but now used for any page they don’t like) and will not index it.

This is not being alarmist; I’ve personally experienced it. The only text on the front page was the site name and the navigation buttons (all with actual text, not images-as-text). It took a while to figure out why people searching for the organization’s name were always sent to an interior page. I resolved it by adding one sentence--literally--to the front page, and now G### is happy.

Again, that's the worst-case version of insufficient text on the front page. On the other hand, it was a rare instance of getting useful information from GSC, so there is that.

tangor

8:02 pm on Aug 4, 2021 (gmt 0)

Secondary, always consider the user first (ignoring desired "seo"). Makes for a better experience.