Build a "start here" cornerstone navigation page for first-time visitors

A dedicated "start here" navigation page addresses a genuine friction point that's easy to overlook once you're deeply familiar with your own content — a new visitor arriving at a content-rich site has no inherent way to know where to begin, and without genuine curated guidance, they're left to either randomly browse or leave without discovering your strongest, most representative work.

The genuine curation this page requires is distinct from and more selective than either the general "best of" roundup or the pillar-specific hub pages — this content is specifically meant to orient someone entirely new to your site and your expertise, meaning the selection should prioritize pieces that genuinely represent the breadth and quality of what you offer, functioning almost as a deliberately curated introduction rather than simply your most popular content by traffic.

The guidance provided alongside each linked piece matters more here than in a typical link list — brief context on what a new visitor will find and why it's a good starting point helps someone unfamiliar with your site make an informed choice about where to begin, rather than presenting an undifferentiated list that requires them to guess which piece is actually the best entry point for their specific interest.

Prominent placement of this page — genuinely visible in navigation, not buried where a new visitor would have to already know to look for it — determines whether it actually captures the friction-reduction value it's meant to provide. A well-built "start here" page that's difficult to discover fails to solve the actual problem it exists to address, regardless of how thoughtfully the curation itself was executed.