When I first put up my website for critique most people didn't like the fact that I put a welcome page up. If not for a welcome page then how should people enter my site. Should they enter through one of my instructional pages? (I am teaching how to skateboard) Should I just put a welcome page up? What should my index page be? A welcome page or some other page?
As long as the site is accessible it doesn't really matter how people enter your site. More often than not people will turn away from your site if they can't navigate it properly, or can't get where they want to go within 3 clicks. Making your site accessible (large, clear links that clearly show what is where) will improve the user's experience, probably lower bounce rate and make them return to your site more often. Ideally you want most of your traffic to be coming from SERPs, and landing directly on the content they want to find. Personally I'm not a huge fan of "Welcome" pages, never saw the point in them except to waste the end user's time. Perhaps you could make some kind of portal, showing latest tutorials / random images? Maybe the latest site news, or if you're got a forum then "recent forum posts" ? What's the link to your site?
Well I decided to start over from scratch so it's still in the code writing process. The link that I had is from my older site that's very primitive at most
If by "Welcome Page" you mean "Splash Page"...then I agree...get rid of it. Unless you need the user to select an option before entering the site; like English or French...or HTML vs Flash. But if it's just a main page with a welcome message, then I don't see anything wrong with that
When I surf, I'm fine with a home page that is very welcoming, but still have navigation options. Landing pages that feel like walking through a blank door with a welcome sign on it, I never liked. A home page can be a welcome page and a home page together.
for a good SEO welcome page is not suitable. one of the most important SEO parameters is the main page's content, if you use a welcome page, google will see your welcome page as your main page...!
I think that main welcome pages are fine just keep live links to your tutorials on the main page for search engine spiders to pick up
I am confused. So for my welcome page I was thinking of just doing like Welcome to the site. Blah Blah Blah. then I will have a video that I will put at the bottom of one of the current tutorials. Good Idea?
Remember to keep the navigation as clean and easy to use as possible though, that really is the key to having a good site with a nice returning userbase!
Remember that it is the quality and usefulness of the content and the ease of navigation through it that are of the greatest importance to most web page users. James
You could also give your readers an overview of website content on a home page. What are the main sections of content, maybe recent or most popular articles. To sort of bait them to explore the site.