Although much of the organic web traffic funneling that SEO companies do is through backlinks in articles and partner sites, the majority of your website visitors end up seeing the landing page before anything else. Even when using search phrases that incorporate long tail keywords or other specified terms, Google and Bing both tend to serve up the front page of a company's site rather than subdirectories or blogs. Because of this, online marketing consultants always instruct their clients to create a welcome entrance to their website for would-be customers.

Of course there will always be some debate regarding what constitutes a well-made landing page. While there are plenty of choices to be made when settling on the final design of a front page, there are also quite a few mistakes that businesses commonly make. When looking at the main address of your company's site, try asking yourself the following questions.

Is my Website an Assault on the Senses?

Sometimes businesses get overzealous in producing big, vibrant entrances to their websites that actually end up driving away potential customers. If you've ever been to a site that features excessive levels of flash, giant banners, or a video intro that starts up the second the page finishes loading, then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. While it is tempting to use eye-catching imagery and heavy design elements to engage site visitors, this amount of effort is better spent on improving the actual content of the landing page itself.

Does my Front Page Lack a Purpose?

SEO companies that provide landing page design for their clients always make sure that a site's front page has value to both visitors and site crawlers. Some companies subscribe to the idea that the main page of a site should be more of a photo gallery than an info dump. While it's true that no one wants to read a wall of text, that doesn't mean that visitors shouldn’t be greeted immediately with information worth knowing. One should always find a happy balance between visual elements and text.

Is my Landing Page Disconnected from our Site?

As strange though it may sound, some companies design front pages that are missing important links to other sections of the site. While I'm not suggesting that a landing page should have links to every page in the domain (a terrible idea), it is always smart to include links that go to much sought-after content. This can include blogs, the site map, FAQs and other well-trafficked pages.

If you're finding that your company's landing page simply isn’t up to snuff and needs an overhaul, I can be contacted at jwersits@webimax.com for more information.