I’m planning on starting a blog soon. I’m stuck with whether to have a static home page or have the blog as my home page.
Two of my favorite blogs, SEO Book and Search Engine Land (both are popular blogs), use different formats. This year SEO Book changed to a static home page. Search Engine Land has kept the blog home page.
Which is the better home page? Well, after some thought, I’ve come to these conclusions.
Static Home Page
If your monetization is mostly based on selling a product, you should have a static home page that highlights your product. This will increase your conversions because the focus of your site is your product.
If you want to point to non-blog timeless resources, you should have a static home page. For example, the SEO Book home page links to these resources: tools, glossary, and SEO guide for bloggers.
If you want to highlight older content on your blog, it might make sense to have a static home page. Darren Rowse of Problogger does this on his static home page. He has a link to his weekly video post. Also, there is a widget that links to his best posts of all time, his best posts in the current month, his best posts for new bloggers, and his personal favorite posts.
Blog Home Page
If you have a blog that mostly covers the news in your niche, it makes sense to have a blog home page. Search Engine Land covers SEO news. Most of the top celeb news blogs (as ranked by Eaton Web) have a blog home page.
If your most important content is timely rather than timeless, you should make your blog your home page. For example, Freelance Writing Jobs, run by our own Deb Ng, has posts on the latest freelance writing jobs. BloggerJobs.biz is a blog that covers new blogging jobs and also bloggers looking for blogging gigs.
My Plan
I plan on using my new blog to build a reputation in my niche. After a couple months, I want to create a product. I hope to earn most of my earnings from the product, so I’m going with a static home page that highlights my product.
Feedback
What kind of home page do you have? Have you ever thought of changing your home page?
9 thoughts on “Should Your Blog Have A Static Home Page?”
Hi, I didn’t know much about a static home page for a blog. I’ve got a blog about all kinds of music related stuff and after reading your article I’m convinced I should go for a static home page. Even better, like some comments above suggested, go for a mixed page, static information intergrated with dynamic content.
For my blog I use WordPress. Can anyone suggest where I can find information about how to build a mixed page…? Any good resources available..?
Thanks,
Max
@m38967: Textpattern is a small CMS which is perfect for a mix of static and dynamic content! You can have different sections and each section can have a different CSS which is great for special theme pages like Christmas, weddings, party, event, blog,…
I am in the process of setting up a wordpress blog for my father-in-laws restaurant, and am going to be using a combo page. Meaning one that is part static and part blog. My aim is to have folks come back regularly and also to showcase the product. (which is the restaurant)
I don’t know of any restaurants using wordpress (or any blog platform) for this usage, so i’m kinda figuring it all out. I’ll keep you guys posted.
Thanks for the comments.
It will be different for each blog because each blog has different goals. And integration as Markus said is key. Also, I think testing different homepages and listening to reader feedback is important too.
One of the best designed mixed static homepages I know is lifetype.net. The site is about one product and the latest news are integrated seamlessly.
Edit: The point I want to make is that integration is the key! Do not only have a link to your blog in the navigation but pull in the fresh news from your blog in a central focus point instead.
As Ahmed says, a mix can work, hence the fashion for magazine style themes. The key is to work out what visitors are coming for and what you want them to do
I tried it a while back but couldn’t get it to work. Now it should be much easier. I have a blog that I use as my company blog, this one is indeed more for selling a product and for promoting and selling my company. For this one the rotating factor is only a “negative” part of the site since this one is only updated when I have the time for it. If i ever have some spare time again;) than I’m for sure changing it to static.
I think that for my normal blogs a rotating front page is the only way to go.
most blogs have a combination of ‘fresh’ articles and timeless resources, so it’s probably a good idea to make a front page that highlights both.
see the front-page of soccerlens.com and PM me if you need to bounce off any ideas.
You have a great plan up your sleeve. Maybe in the future I could emulate what you plan to do. As of now, my main project centers on the entertainment niche so I think a blog home page would be perfect for it.
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