How many home pages does your website have?

If you answered "one," you're wrong!

Most business owners think their website home page works much like the front entrance to the hobby shop on main street or the bakery in a nearby strip mall: In other words, that everyone is going to come in through the front entrance.

That's not how things work on the web, however. On the web, you have as many entrances as you have web pages on your site. So, if you have a website with six pages, you have six entrances into your website. If you have a website with 339 pages, you have 339 entrances into your site.

While each website technically has only one home page (the index or default page in the root directory), from an online marketing perspective every page on your website is a potential entryway, and therefore could be thought of as an alternative home page.

Why does that matter?

One reason is that people who arrive on your site through some page other than the home page may never see the information on your home page. So, if you have a special offer that's only visible from your home page, the people who enter your site from some other page may never see it.

Another reason to pay attention to those other entryways:

If you don't optimize each page on your website you may be missing out on free traffic coming from search engines. Someone searching for a specific product you sell may wind up on a competitor's site because the competitor has a specific web page all about that product and has optimized the page to attract search engine traffic.

Bottom line: stop thinking about your website like a small store on main street. Instead, think about it like a big department store in a shopping mall. The department store typically has several entrances from different sides of the parking lot, as well as from inside the shopping mall. The store makes each entryway unique. Thus customers entering from the south entrance might walk into the men's department. Those from the east parking lot, go into the women's shoe department, and those entering from the indoor mall entrance may walk smack into the perfume department.

But remember, you aren't limited to a handful of entrances. You have as many entrances as you have web pages. Make good use of all of them.

More: Looking Good On The Web

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