In the early days of the Web, many sites were designed like branching adventure stories. The user was expected to enter at the home page and follow the path of links laid out by the designer, with limited choices and moving forward in a predetermined way.

Today, if the content of your site is well represented in search engine indexes, many people don't come in through your home page. Any page at your site is a potential entry point.

There is nothing special about a home page. All pages are created equal, as far as search engines are concerned. Because of the volume of traffic that could come to your site by way of search engines, you should pay attention to every page. Make sure that whatever page a visitor sees first, the focus and purpose of the site and the context of that particular page are clear. You also should be sure to provide navigation buttons on every page.

But you do need a home page, or the equivalent of one. You need a page that serves as a navigation hub for the static pages at your site, to which other pages can point. As a rule of thumb, it shouldn't take more than three clicks to go from anywhere at a Web site to any other page at that same site.