Is Google still interested in seeing a lot of text on a domain homepage?

Google is only interested in text if it is useful for website visitors. Whether you need a lot or a little text depends on the context of your website. The homepage of a website or online shop will normally mainly rank for the company brand name, and it should make it immediately obvious what the company offers, with clear, useful links to sub-pages. Take a look at the homepages of Booking.com or Airbnb. You won’t find any big blocks of text. You’ll find a large number of images and a wide array of links to sub-pages. They do without long explanations of exactly what the company does and what you can do on their site. Instead, they let you easily navigate deeper into the site where you can move through the booking process.

In eCommerce in particular, many visitors don’t enter a shop via the homepage. People search on Google for particular product categories or specific products, and the homepage is unlikely to rank for these. That’s why, when optimizing your shop, you should always consider the needs of the customer, rather than the needs of the search engine. Would it help your customers if there was a long text to read on the homepage? Are they looking for detailed explanations or are they aiming to find the product they’re looking for quickly – and buy it? Only make your texts as long as they need to be in order to say what is relevant for your customers.