One of the major misconceptions of the modern web is that websites still exist. Websites are institutions on the web, often depicted as an organizational scheme, never too seldom used to show the content of a domain with the name “sitemap”.
As modern web users we all know that this stopped being the case a couple of years back. Still however, we use these kind of images to depict our websites. Why? Well, my guess is, that it is easy and pedagogical within an institution to display its web “face” in the same fashion as the oranisational schemes people are used too. Fair enough. But with regards to SEO, this view of a website can be very hassardous.
Google as the startpage
Since Google decided to take over the web, it has become more and more important for oranizations to become visible on the search engine result pages. Simply enough this is due to the fact that people search, and they like to search. People like to compare and given the 10 options of a search engine result page, they are satisfied that they are given enough options to choose. Now, most people choose one of the first three choices in a search result, but they still find this as being a choice in front of the other nine that was out there to grab.