The Basics of Homepage SEO

Your homepage is the most important part of your website. It is the heart of who you are as a company, allows website crawlers to understand you and your relevance to searches, and stands as the front gate for all those internet travelers venturing your way. A well-designed homepage is critical to a well-ranked website in the same way that a poorly designed homepage is death to a site. Any business owner is thinking of developing a website or going back and re-working their current one should take time to fully understand just how vital a good homepage can be to the success of their online presence. People continue to spend more and more time online, and to capitalize on this seemingly never-ending growth market, business owners need every edge they can get out of their websites.

What to Consider When Optimizing My Homepage

There are several items to consider when optimizing your homepage. However, if you get the basics wrong, the most complex design won’t save you. While we’ll consider the preliminary stages of your homepage creation here, contact Performance First Marketing for an in-depth and personal review of your company’s needs and goals.

The Basics

• 1) Focus on Your Brand Name & Product

• • If you’re a law firm, your page title should optimally be the name of your law firm and a geotag of where you operate such as “Best of the Best Law Firm | New York, NY.”

• • If you’re selling a product, put that in your title.
• 2) Highlight your Call to Action

• • Make it big and bold, and let it stand out from your site. A good call to action draws the eyes towards it and provides a clear road sign to where they are about to go like “Free Consultations Here,” or “Employers Sign Up Here.”

• 3) Design an Easy-to-Use Menu

• • The hard part is getting traffic to your website. Don’t ruin it by making it unnavigable. Make each menu option crystal clear and each drop-down menu intuitive to use. Anywhere your visitors go, make sure there’s content to read.

• 4) Add Content to Your Homepage

• • Flashy pictures and videos are fine and engaging, but a good homepage should have a significant amount of written content on it. The reason is twofold.

• • • a) People coming to your site will stay longer if they can learn a lot about you without having to click anything or go anywhere else. The longer they’re on your page, the more likely you are to convert them into a paid customer.

• • • b) Search engine crawlers use the information on your homepage to understand what your site is about and if it is relevant to what people are searching for.

• 5) But Don’t Forget About Media

• • Pictures and videos are easy to understand. They also add a warm face to what can be an otherwise cold homepage.

• • Your homepage should have a nice big picture on it, preferably something relevant to your brand or product and not a stock image. For example, a law firm could have an image of your practicing attorneys.

• • A video can also add life and personality to the page
• 6) Keep It Minimal and Clean

• • Don’t clog the homepage with lots of pictures, videos, links to other places, bloated footers, or pop-ups. Keep it simple, clean, and easily navigable. Your traffic will love you for it.

• 7) Include Your Contact Info

• • This is incredibly important because it gives potential customers a way of speaking with you, increasing the chance of selling your product. It’s an easy to add and vitally important piece of any homepage and should be clearly marked.

• • Your hours of operation should also be listed if applicable.
• 8) Promote Your Social Media
  • Put links to these platforms on your page. People will know you’re part of the 21st century with a presence on the biggest social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and it’s also a way for them to confirm you’re still active.
• 9) Be Mobile Device Friendly

• • The majority of internet searches are now done on smartphones. If your page is not optimized for mobile searches, you’re severely gimping your online presence.

While these tips will get you started, they’re only the foundation.

For more information on homepage optimization or other digital marketing needs, contact Performance First Marketing.