How many articles should I have on my main page?

What is the best layout for a main page for a website which contains articles.

Should there be the most recent article on the main page with links to all the other articles or display the title and first paragraph of each article? Or would it be a good idea to just try out the different options? I don't know whether this would be beneficial or not to make such a change as it would change the whole 'feel' of the site.

 

as a rule at the mainpage are the freshest articles. If your website have different categories then the freshest articles in each category cam appear (with the names of categories!)

 

not to thread jack, but what if the main page was a about page with links in the description to other pages and articles?

 

Google will want to see relevant content on your front page (just like a human would). Is your site focused completely on articles, your main page should be focused around that. You can still put up something else on your front page, but somewhere above the fold should be the start of your articles.

As for how to display them, you have a few options.

Generally you don't want to display a full article on the front page if it has its own page. Google can give you a downgrade for it (seeing it as unnecessary duplicate content).

If you have a large number of articles being added frequently (such as 20+ per day), you could just provide titles of the articles with links to the separate articles, along with a couple excerpts of the absolute newest articles.

If you don't get new content up that often, a page of excerpts is a good choice. A human likes seeing a preview before they click through to somewhere. Google knows this and is set up to think like a human in that regard. To make it obvious that Google thinks this way, go do a Google search. It displays excerpts for each page because Google knows that is what a human wants.

You could also do something like showing excerpts of the 6 most recent articles, title links to 10 randomly selected older articles, and a few excerpts of popular articles. Focus does not always have to be completely on what is new. Google will like seeing a few excerpts to popular articles because those articles are popular for a reason, meaning it is more likely that they will be what a human wants to see.

 

Yes, you are right. freshest articles helps search engines to give ranks to a site. So make all new fresh articles should be appeared on homepage.

 

Fresh and unique content is always used to increase your page rank and make the value of your page regarding search engine.

 

Your themes design is also one of the considerations to decide how many articles need to be displayed on the main page.

 

Agree. There are themes that would even allow you to post at least 4 NEW articles.

 

Fresh content and relevant content is the main thing... no matter how much articles you post if its not orginal and relevant to your website then its of no use...