Your first impression doesn't happen on your home page. It happens on the results page, when a director types your name into Google, and in the little card that appears when someone forwards your link. This article covers what sits on that first screen, how much of it you control, and where to start.
The ten-minute exercise
Before reading on, do it: an incognito browser window, your name and your instrument, enter. Look at the first screen the way a stranger would. Which results come up, with which titles, which descriptions. Which images of you appear. How much of what you see was written by you, and how much by someone else.
Across the 250-plus projects I've built since 1999, that screen is almost always the real front door. The people who evaluate you pass through it before reaching any page of yours, and part of the decision forms right there.
The two lines Google shows
For every page of your site, the results show a title and a description: two lines, and you write them. They are your card outside the website, and deserve to be written as one. "Home" says nothing. "Maria Rossi, cellist: biography, recordings, concert dates" says everything a first glance needs.
It holds for every page you want found: the bio, the recordings, the dates. On a well-built site those lines are a field to fill in, not a developer's job.
The profiles you no longer update
That first screen almost always includes pages you don't control: the conservatory profile, a festival page from years ago, an old channel. Wishing them away doesn't work, and you don't need to. Three moves, in order. Update what is yours, even the profile you no longer use, if one line of bio can be changed. Write to whoever hosts the pages with the outdated bio: festivals and institutions correct them gladly, you just have to ask. For the rest, let your website outrank them: an active site carrying your name tends to climb above pages that stand still.
The preview when your link gets shared
There is a second first impression, smaller and more frequent: the card that appears when your link lands in a chat or on a social feed. A title, two lines, one image. It's how your website travels when someone passes it along, and that happens more often than you'd think: a colleague recommending you, a presenter forwarding your name to another.
Same test: paste your own link into a chat and look at what comes up. If a random image or an empty card appears, that is the version of you making the rounds.
The result that leads
You will never control the whole results page, and that's fine. You control the result that matters: a live, updated website with your name in the domain tends to hold the first spot for a search of your name. From there on, what counts is what visitors find inside, and that was last month's article: the three pages that matter.
Where to start
With the opening exercise, done today and repeated once the site is live: the first screen changes, and watching it change is the most concrete way to know it's working. If what comes up today doesn't look like you, write to me and send what you saw: that is exactly where the work begins.