How should I build my Homepage?

Hi, so after going off and testing a few other areas other than SEO I am coming back to try and give SEO and making websites for affiliate marketing a go. So at this point I think I know all the basics I need from reading this forum and through searching, but I just have one question left that I can?t find by searching which is what should I have on my homepage? Do I treat it like any other page with content that I try to rank or is it mainly just there to link to the real content or something else? How should I deal with backlinks and linking to and from other pages on my site for the homepage? And just anything else I should be doing for my homepage.

Thanks

Well depending on the type of site you're running, your home page is the forefront of your site/business and should be the page dedicated to explaining what your site/business offers. You're in a way correct that it's used to link to the "real" content but it's an important part of any site and should be treated as such. Unless you're main targeted keywords are on your home page and you're only looking to rank your home page, than you should be building links to all pages on your site and not just the home page, especially is you're running an affiliate/adsense site and are wanting to rank for multiple keywords at which point makes building links to all of your pages necessary.

There's a lot more that I could add to this but I could go on and on for hours. Sorry if the information is a little bit scattered but I hope this helped to answer your question(s).

Veyron

Veyron is right. You absolutely have to build inner pages (and links to inner pages) to rank for multiple keywords, longtail keywords, etc. I don't try to rank my homepages anymore. Instead I use tons of branding links, naked URL links, and silo the link juice through to the most competitive pages I want to rank. Those link to less and less competitive inner pages, and they all link back to the homepage or #1 most competitive page, keeping all the link juice flowing to where it needs to go most. Sorry this is short, but like V said, we could discuss this for hours.

Your home page should briefly talk about what your site is all about, have navigation to all other pages and also keywords for your niche.

In terms of building backlinks you will need to take it one step at a time if you don't have the time and/or resource to take the entire site at a time..

Your home page should be the place where when your future clients (hopefully) visit they can see
the benefits of you over your competitor and then know as much as possible as to what you have to offer.

It can be the most converting page since that is the first place people land.