There is a lot of discussion online on the subject of whether a website should or shouldn't have a website button. The trend over the last few years is to not have a Homepage button instead opting for a clickable logo or another route to the homepage. How does having a homepage button impact SEO? Will adding a homepage button get me more visitors? In this post I discuss how customers who visit your website impact your SEO and what role a homepage button in your main navigation has to play in this matter.

How UX impacts SEO:

A huge part of SEO is the usability (or UX) of a website. That is improving the customer experience by improving how a site works, making it easier to use. The reasons why webmasters should do this are numerous.

The easier a website is to use the happier your customers will be. The happier your customers are the longer they will spend on your site. The longer the spend on your site the more likely they are to convert.

So in short, improving the UX of your website will lead to happier customers and more sales. However, there is also a benefit to SEO here.

SEO can be largely categorised into four main areas. Technical SEO, Content, Backlinks and CX (or Customer Experience). Customer experience or CX is an important factor for one very common sense reason, Google wants to display the best results but it also wants to provide the best customer experience. Imagine a technical directory from a complicated industry or sector. Full of information but in an old listed format. Although extremely useful, to find the information that you need you need to sift through reams of information, you land on that page, see the mountain that you have to climb in order to find that slice of information that you need, decide its to much and leave the site. Although useful, it was difficult to find. So you have left that site in order to find a better source of information. Google does not want that. It wants you to find the most relevant website to provide you with that information and then you go onto to read it. Staying a few minutes, perhaps browsing some other pages.

UX can help you improve your customer experience and improve that dwell time, it can help reduce bounce rate and increase the number of pages that a site visitor chooses to look at. How? By simply making the information more accessible and easy to find. How does Google measure how good your customer experience is? From Google Analytics of course. When Google Analytics turned 10 a couple of years back it was estimated that over 50% of all websites had Google Analytics plugged in, this figure is much higher when you look at the most visited websites. In short, Google is tracking the customer experience of the majority of websites and probably a huge percentage of all web traffic. It uses this to sharpen its results and provide not only the best result in terms of answering your query but also the best in terms of experience based on the many visitors that have arrived at those sites before.

But I digress..

Why does including a homepage button improve UX and in turn SEO? Why should you have one?

I am working with a big client who works within the automotive sector. They have a well designed site, great products and are actively trying to improve their traffic using SEO. As part of a UX audit we noticed that they did not have a homepage button. The site had been recently redesigned and looked great, but the response was, 'Well, the logo is the homepage button. Isn't having a homepage button a bit old fashioned? Our customers will know to use that'.

It's true that over the last five years or so websites have largely been built without homepage buttons. I would suggest that this trend mimics the likes of Facebook and Amazon whom influence website design so greatly. But who simultaneously have no place for a traditional home page. Also as mobile first design becomes more important, desktop and tablet formats are sometimes secondary in the mind of the developer when creating a navigation.

But should your website have a homepage button? Well, here's 7 reasons why you should not follow trends and make sure that your website (particularly the desktop and tablet versions) have a homepage button.

7 reasons why you should have a homepage button

The home page will be your most visited page, by far. It probably commands more traffic than any other page on your website. For this reason alone it should command a position in the prime real estate that is the main navigation. Site visitors use the home page to navigate (and re-navigate mid search) to top content, homepage design usually creates a page of links to your top content. By prioritising the home page as first in the navigation it will draw more clicks and have a greater chance of directing visitors to your selling pages. Only a small percentage of customers actually arrive via the homepage (as a landing page). If the don't find what they want on the first page, the best page to recommence their search is via the home page. Highlighting this in the nav is the best way to draw that click and redirect the customer. It's an opportunity to reduce friction. Customers aren't always as tech savvy as web developers or digital marketing guys and gals, neither is everyone as comfortable with modern website design, they might be looking for the homepage button (and not find it). If this happens it's called friction, friction causes frustration (not a happy customer) and they will become more likely to leave the site or simply view less pages. Is it safe to assume that your customers are as tech savvy as you? A greater percentage of customers who visit the site are new and unfamiliar with the design or how it works. Check new versus returning visitors in your Google Analytics account to see how many customers are new to your site. Do they really have time to familiarise themselves with your quirky design?From a technical SEO perspective there is another reason to have a homepage in the main navigation too. Adding the homepage button to the nav, above the fold. Redirects lots more juice to the home page. The homepage isn't just the key place for customers to renavigate, its the best route to redirect link juice and search bots to your top content. Adding another homepage link will help with internal linking structure and help create a page that we can focus on tougher, harder to achieve keywords and phrases.

So adding a homepage button to your website has the following benefits.

Clearly directs customers to your most visited page. Prioritises your top content and ability to direct customers to it. Creates a less frictional experience. It puts the homepage button where site visitors expect to find it. It assumes that a customer is not familiar with your website. It redirects link juice and improves site architecture and indexation from search engines. Ultimately it improves the usability of your website, Google understands this from your analytics account and rewards you with better positions and more traffic.

If you are still undecided I think the question you need to ask yourself is 'Why wouldn't I have a homepage button in the top navigation? Are there better reasons to exclude it?

Paul Lymer is an SEO specialist and founder or Improve Marketing. For more on Improve marketing's SEO Services click the link.

Thanks for reading!