5 Steps to More Effective Website Pages

July 29, 2010 by Jeune Ortiz

Improving your website can be a daunting task. Where do you even start? Our best suggestion is to take your site one page at a time and apply these five steps to improve every one of them. When you’re done, you not only do better in the search engines, but your visitors will thank you.

1. Page Titles

Page titles are the text at the very top of the browser window (usually to the right of the browser logo). Make sure all your pages have page titles that describe the content on the page. Commonly you’ll see page titles that look like this: Business Name: Business Tagline. Nice idea, but in the end, ineffective. Search engines actually use the page titles to index your content. So unless you’re a national brand like Nike, Ford, or Ikea, it’s doubtful people will be using your business name or tagline in their search.

2. Headlines

Use page headers in at least three sizes. The largest, of course, would be used for the overall page header and should contain a keyword or keywords that reflect the page content. Then use the remaining header sizes to break up your content. People skim pages and look for keywords. Headlines make it easy to skim the content and entice your site visitor into actually reading your content.

3. Copywriting

From headlines to actual copy, make sure you’re conveying the benefits - not the features – of your product or service. For instance, if you’re a commercial cleaner don’t list all the names of cleaning products you use (features). Instead,  tell people how safe, clean, and well preserved their property will be when they use your service (benefit).

4. Calls to Action

After the user has read through your material, what do you want them to do next? Should they read more, download something, sign up for a newsletter, or make contact? It might seem obvious to you, but to a user who may not have ever researched your product or service they are looking for a guide. So help them out and let them know what they should do next.

5. Improve Link Verbiage

When linking to more information, “Read More” is about as dull and ineffective a link as you can get. Instead, describe the information you’re going to link to. Not only does this help the search engines keep crawling your site, it helps visitors by giving them a preview of what they are about to see. For example: “Want an even more effective website? Fix these three web design problems.”

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We specialize in combining solid marketing strategies in every website we design. We can help you make effective changes to your site – changes that will result in more leads and sales.  Read more about our Web design service or contact us directly.