SEO Fix: Adding the <main> Landmark to the Homepage

SEO Fix: Adding the `<main>` Landmark to the Homepage

Release: v1.0.378
Control: SEO-13
Area: Semantic HTML / Accessibility

Background

HTML5 landmark elements — <header>, <nav>, <main>, <footer>, <aside> — give browsers, screen readers, and search crawlers a structured map of a page. The <main> element specifically designates the primary content region: the content that is unique to that page and distinct from repeated chrome like navigation or footers.

The WAI-ARIA specification and WCAG 2.1 (Technique ARIA11) both require that pages expose a <main> landmark so that assistive technologies can offer "skip to main content" functionality.

The Problem

The homepage (src/app/page.tsx) had the following structure:

<!-- Before: no <main> landmark -->
<div class="flex min-h-screen flex-col">
  <header>…</header>
  <div> <!-- anonymous wrapper -->
    <section> <!-- hero --> </section>
    <section> <!-- features --> </section>
    <section> <!-- trust / CTA --> </section>
  </div>
  <footer>…</footer>
</div>

All section content — the hero, feature highlights, and the trust/CTA block — sat inside an anonymous <div>. There was no <main> element, so:

Screen readers presented the page without a navigable content landmark.
Keyboard users had no "skip to main content" target.
Search crawlers could not distinguish primary page content from surrounding layout.

By contrast, the Pricing, Privacy, Terms, and ROPA pages already used <main> correctly, creating an inconsistency across the site.

The Fix

The anonymous content wrapper <div> was replaced with a <main> element:

<!-- After: correct landmark structure -->
<div class="flex min-h-screen flex-col">
  <header>…</header>
  <main class="flex flex-1 flex-col">
    <section> <!-- hero --> </section>
    <section> <!-- features --> </section>
    <section> <!-- trust / CTA --> </section>
  </main>
  <footer>…</footer>
</div>

The change is a single tag substitution. The Tailwind utility classes (flex flex-1 flex-col) are preserved, so the visual layout is completely unaffected.

Impact

Area	Before	After
Screen reader landmark navigation	No `<main>` region announced	`<main>` region correctly identified
"Skip to content" link target	No valid target	`<main>` serves as the skip target
Search crawler content weighting	Primary content in anonymous `<div>`	Primary content inside `<main>`
Visual layout	Unchanged	Unchanged
Other pages (Pricing, Privacy, Terms, ROPA)	Already correct	Already correct

Accessibility & SEO Notes

A page must not contain more than one <main> element (excluding hidden ones). This fix adds exactly one.
The <main> element implicitly carries the ARIA role main, so no explicit role="main" attribute is needed.
This change resolves a potential WCAG 2.1 Level A failure under Success Criterion 1.3.6 (Identify Purpose) and supports SC 2.4.1 (Bypass Blocks).
From an SEO perspective, content within <main> is treated as the canonical body of the document by major crawlers, improving content signal clarity for the homepage — the highest-value page on the domain.