Home pages and SEO
 

I am interested in implementing a home page which would contain a link to the site's forums. Would this be a negative impact on SEO? Would a search engine rank the site low due to the lack of content on the home page? An explanation of your answer would greatly help.

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Hello,

Do you mean you want your landing page to just be a link to your main forums?

I'm not totally sure on the impact of that on SEO, however I can't imagine it would be a positive thing. From a user point of view the fewer clicks through to the content they want is better.

Also, I would add that since Google is more focused on ranking for quality, natural content, with the Panda and Penguin updates, that if your landing page contains nothing then it probably won't rank at all, however if your forums have good content then they stand a chance to rank on their own - which begs the question of why needing a manual re-direct at all?

Landing pages do not do much if anything these days though they used to be used often with decent results depending on the page.

You will get value from good content and a good user experience, not a landing page.

Very good points, thanks!

What about a homepage that has some sort of widget displaying new threads/posts etc. from the forums? Thoughts on how that would be, in terms of SEO?