Insights

Why Every Web Page Is Important For SEO

Author - Brett Tudor
12.04.2021

Not every website is built with SEO in mind. Websites often have a homepage, about us and services pages and so on that are often written without any emphasis on the keywords being targeted apart from the company name.

This is fine if you own a business with a big brand following. People will find the website regardless of the keywords being targeted but if your business is one of many competing in a niche, then making the absolute most of your web pages by correctly targeting them for keywords is critical.

More effective keyword targeting is often reserved for landing pages but it is important that every one of the indexable pages on your website are ‘landing pages’

What is a landing page?

You’ll often hear web pages referred to as landing pages especially those pages that are constructed to gain a better conversion rate or to promote a specific product or service.

A lot of time and effort goes into crafting a landing page to ensure it performs well so why not employ that same care with other pages that are visible in the menu?

To perform well in search, a landing page should score high on usability and convert well which is really the purpose of all pages on a website. Just because an about page is an information page about the business it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be targeted with keywords that describe what  the business does.

I would argue that the purpose of a good web page or landing page is to:

• Gain and hold the attention
• Answer a question or query
• Encourages an action

So the question needs to be asked, does every page on your website do this? Or does the about page simply list the history of the business, its people and give site visitors a reason to find out more?

If we consider a website from a user’s perspective, then it becomes easier to understand why a web page is failing on some or all of the above points.

So let’s go through each page on a typical website and see how the main purposes of a web page can overlooked.

Home Page

The homepage is the shopfront of the website and usually the most visited page. The homepage shouldn’t explain everything the business does in one page but it should act as the entrance that compels people to take action.

In terms of SEO, a homepage is usually optimised for the brand name rather than keywords. I would argue this isn’t necessarily the right approach for businesses that need to compete for niche keyword targets.

The homepage is generally the strongest page on a website when it comes to keyword rankings, so it’s common sense to have core keyword targets featured in areas such as title tags, body copy and in headings.

Optimising a homepage for the brand or a catchy slogan means the page isn’t being targeted towards keywords and can be a missed opportunity. If few people have heard of your brand, then why optimise the strongest page on the website for the brand name? It is likely the domain name itself will be enough to show up at the top of search results in any case.

The about page

The about page can also be a missed opportunity if it isn’t targeted. Often an about page will also be optimised with the brand name and cover the key people working in the business. The content in about us pages therefore tends to be written and optimised to be only about the business and its people and often fails to hold the attention or encourage an action. Unless the people and the business are well-known in the industry then search visibility will also be limited.

Keyword targeting, therefore, is nonexistent which ensures the page remains invisible in the search results. To avoid this, the about page should target keywords that are widely searched and describe what the business is about. When viewers land on the page they will be looking to find out more about the business but the page should also explain how the business solves problems for customers and encourage users to take an action to experience that same great customer experience.

Product and services pages

Services pages tend to be easier to optimise because keyword targeting should come naturally. Which is just as well as it is these pages that are the most important when it comes to making sales. Visitors to your product or service pages will be looking to find out more about what your business has to offer so ticking all the key features of a good landing page is a must.

The important thing to remember is to ensure there are no other pages on the website competing for the same keywords. Competing pages can often be detrimental to SEO and result in keyword rankings fluctuating significantly over time.  

Blog pages

A common mistake with blog pages is to target products and service categories rather than long tail search queries. Another is to treat the blog as a news page – they are not the same.

A blog page should be aimed at the kinds of searches queries people are typing. So blog titles and headings should be correctly optimised to reach people typing in those queries. I always think it’s a missed opportunity when I see a blog with a generic title that refers to anything other than how a business helps its customer.

Creative titles that mean nothing to nobody apart from the writer are not going to perform well in the search results or help overall websit visibility.

Conclusion

As we have established, every web page is an important web page and should be treated as such. The harder you work to transform your web pages into well optimised, high converting pages that provide a solid user experience, the better your website will perform as a tool for generating leads and sales for your business.