On most sites that I have managed, the homepage is not in first place. Sometimes it can rank as low as third. Is that a
surprise? It shouldn’t be. Most site owners know that internally
everyone wants a piece of the homepage but further analysis may
determine that your home page is not as important as people think. I
keep telling people that the home page is not that important but no one
seems to believe me.

Going to the home page is reflecting the behaviour of the marketers
or other people in your organization who may have it bookmarked it or
type in the URL directly. To them, it is as if having a banner or
promotion on the home page is the same as having a big sign at the
front of the store, where all of the customers enter. However, on the
web, users can enter from a wide variety of back and side doors -
through Google or Live searches, campaign pages or RSS links from other
sites for example. So, as you prioritize your development, you should
consider how the users are flowing through the site.

How to Put your Homepage into Perspective

Look at your web analytics reports (Omniture, Webtrends, Google
Analytics etc) and see where the homepage ranks. You can also check
your entry pages. As I said before, right now on the content-site I
work on, the homepage is in 5th place behind campaign pages and some
articles that rank well on the search engines. This means that more
emphasis will be placed on linking from those pages, without being a
distraction. On the online job board where I used to work, the home
page ranked far behind the search screen and the results screen, so the
best cross-promotion opportunities were there.

That being said, if your top page is a campaign page, you may not
want to link off of it since it will likely hurt conversions. One good
way to cross-promote is to put a dramatic splash about another campaign
on the thank-you page. Of course, after you are done with the analysis
and the implementation, wash, rinse, repeat - it is time to analyse
again! See what the referring pages are to your desired destination
pages to see if your promotion was successful.