What to do with the Homepage

I'm curious what everyone's approach for your site's homepage (particularly websites with many pages and possibly multiple "sections").

There is the google minimalistic approach - a handful of links to key sections... or the approach I find a lot of webmasters take cramming as much info on the homepage as possible.

I try to balance SEO efforts, usability, and attention grabbing info and proof the site has up to date information - along with other factors... And I never feel the page looks good or encourages visitors to click through.

What do you do... and why?