A Website Checklist for SEO Success
Creating a small business website can be overwhelming, especially if you’re unsure what to include. There are infinite options, though certain basics should be present on every site. Some pages aren’t optional if you want to avoid causing customers frustration or confusion—a potential customer who’s spent 10 minutes looking for a page that doesn’t exist will never become an actual customer. A lack of these important pages makes a site look unprofessional and possibly unhelpful, destroying credibility while negatively impacting search results. To thoroughly assess the problem, you need to be systematic. Read on for website tips that will help you spot issues and avoid common mistakes.
Basic Website Requirements
Your homepage has a job: conveying what your business does, who benefits from it, and why that’s relevant to visitors. It needs to do that job in just a few seconds. Some information that goes on other pages should also be available directly on the homepage, such as contact information and hours. Major products and services should have their own pages, each with a list of benefits and details. Product pages should also contain calls-to-action (CTAs). No matter which page we’re talking about, though, make a point to give clarity and avoid jargon.
Critical Pages for Digital Marketing
Some pages are necessary because you can’t establish credibility without them; some are even legally required in certain countries, like privacy policy pages. Here are some other must-have pages:
- About page: Share your business’s story and unique selling points.
- Contact page: This should include more than one way to reach you; forms alone won’t do.
- Terms of Service: ToS pages protect your business from a wide variety of legal pitfalls.
- Testimonials: Many sites lack testimonials. If they do have testimonials, visitors sometimes struggle to find them. Make it easy for visitors to discover how much other customers adore your offerings.
Links to critical pages should be placed at the bottom of each page. Visitors should be able to find Contact and About pages in the primary navigation menu as well.
Blogs for Stellar Website Content
You might feel unsure about whether a blog is important for your site, even when you already have all the necessary pages. It is. High-quality content boosts your digital marketing reach, attracting organic search traffic and increasing conversions. It also establishes the kind of authority that people trust. The more useful or interesting (hopefully both) your blog posts are, the more people will trust your business—through writing useful posts, you establish yourself as an expert who customers can turn to for guidance, somebody who really knows what they’re doing. Blog posts are also great for word-of-mouth marketing, not to mention the fact that they give you consistent new opportunities to expose visitors to CTAs. CTAs should go in prominent places such as headers, navigation bars, and the end of each post. If you do all this right, your website will be easy for customers to find and use while attracting new customers regularly.
