SEO is one of the most effective ways to draw new clients towards your product or service, but if your website isn’t designed to make the most of your keywords, it isn’t going to work as well as it could. Here are some of the elements every website should have in order to make the most of their search engine optimization strategy.
The Homepage
This might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many sites push their customers right into the deep end without having a good central hub to tie all their pages together. This page should always make a clear and simple introduction to what your site offers, and should be able to direct readers to the best area for their needs with little to no hassle. Making sure your homepage is concise and easy to navigate will give your potential clients an easier time understanding just what it is you have to offer.
Product and Service Categories
Having all your goods lumped into one sprawling sales page is a recipe for customer frustration, especially if you operate in the retail sector. Putting all your different offerings on different specified pages not only makes your website easier to use, it creates a good opportunity to utilize an introductory paragraph or two in which you can utilize more of your SEO terms. That said, it’s also important to make sure these pages aren’t too granular; for example, if you sell car components, having a page marked “Toyota parts” is a great idea, but making one for “red Toyota parts” might be taking it a step too far. You can always add a custom search filter to your page to help customers find exactly what they need without confusing them with too many categories.
Contact
No one is going to have much confidence in your business if they don’t know where or how they can reliably get in touch with you. Let customers know that you have a friendly and knowledgeable team that will be able to answer any questions or concerns they may have about what you have to offer them. Make sure you have a page that lists your company phone number, times when you can be reached, and a contact form they can fill out to easily send you emails if they have questions or comments.
About
What’s your company’s history, and what are some things about it that make it truly and uniquely yours? No two businesses are exactly alike, and knowing what makes yours tick can help you to stick out in your patrons’ minds. Making a page where clients can learn a little more about your story and what sets you apart from the rest can endear you to potential customers, and it’s a great place for using SEO terms to drag curious parties in from their search results.
FAQ
Not everything about your products and services may always be obvious to a first-time visitor, so having an FAQ page is a great way to clear up common questions and misconceptions without having to make a potential customer go to the trouble of sending you an email or giving you a call.
Blogs
People don’t only want to get their hands on a great product or service when they visit your website—they like to be informed and entertained, as well. Having a section dedicated to news, trivia, advice and more about the world of your business is an increasingly popular way to entice search engine users to click on your page. And thanks to the ability for readers to leave comments, and the wide amount of subject matter a given post can tackle, blog entries are a great way to engage with your clientele.
Shipping, Returns and Other Deals
If you can claim to have fast and excellent shipping, easy returns or an affordable sale section on your website, don’t hesitate to brag about them! Everyone likes to save money, and discovering an outlet or service that offers great stuff at a price lower than they can find elsewhere is like stumbling over a treasure trove for many customers. Not only do patrons get a great sense of how your business can give them better value than the competition, it also makes for a natural way to incorporate SEO terms into your copy without seeming forced.
Industry Uses
It’s always good to have a section that details what kinds of customers and businesses use your services the most. It’s a great way of explaining the intricacies of the ways your company can be used, and it clues in potential customers on some ways to maximize your talents that they might not have previously realized. Plus, this creates a window for your copy to incorporate search terms that will pull in interested demographics that may not have otherwise stumbled upon your page.
Putting it All Together
Once you have all of these pages set up, it’s important to make sure each one has at least a small paragraph containing the SEO terms you want potential customers to find, down to the product descriptions of each item you sell. It doesn’t necessarily need to be very long—obviously a blog post will have more opportunities for SEO incorporation than a single product page will, for instance—but you should get to the point where no page on your website is just a blank slate with a clickable link to the page’s subject. Maximizing the efficiency of your SEO strategy means making sure every part of your site, no matter how big or how small, has the text and voice you need to draw your clients in.
If you’d like to see some of these principles in action, get in touch with Seventh Scout today. Our SEO expertise have helped a wide range of entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes and functions reach the audience they need to succeed. Contact Seventh Scout and take your project to the next level now.
