> 1.1 Ensure every page includes both implicit and explicit links to the homepage.
One of my pet peeve anti-patterns is API documentation sites not linking to the actual company homepage, only to the documentation root. Documentation sites will have much better SEO than you think, especially for queries that include the word “API” - there’s absolutely no guarantee that someone will have made a purchasing decision for your product, or even have seen any of your marketing, before happening upon your API docs. You’re forcing motivated, technical would-be evangelists to have their first interaction with your brand being a need to manually edit a URL to get to your main page. It’s an easily overlooked step as you’re standing up your docs, but a vital one.
Also a peeve of mine, it’s super common on landing pages and causes me to just bounce off of what was probably a paid link. Sometimes I wonder how much money if paid traffic gets wasted simply by trying to force a call to action form down peoples throat on a landing page before people even know who you are
My immediate reaction was this sounds like a Jakob Nielsen article. So I was very happy to see the author credit him at the end of the article.
It also struck me how treating your users better is aligned with furthering your business goals. A lot of the flashy, click baity tactics just drive users away because it blocks them from finding out more about your products and services.
One of my pet peeve anti-patterns is API documentation sites not linking to the actual company homepage, only to the documentation root. Documentation sites will have much better SEO than you think, especially for queries that include the word “API” - there’s absolutely no guarantee that someone will have made a purchasing decision for your product, or even have seen any of your marketing, before happening upon your API docs. You’re forcing motivated, technical would-be evangelists to have their first interaction with your brand being a need to manually edit a URL to get to your main page. It’s an easily overlooked step as you’re standing up your docs, but a vital one.