Many small-business owners are making a big mistake with their website. They have a prominent, clearly marked page called “Services” to let visitors know all about their offerings.
Here’s why that’s a fumble that could be costing you new clients.
A plain old “Services” label can undermine your SEO efforts as well as your website’s conversion rate (its ability to turn visitors into active prospects or customers).
How so?
Humor me for a moment by pretending I need some home renovations (always fun to fantasize about!).
I type in a few words into Google and come across the website of a local construction company. Not wanting to waste any time, I go straight to their single-service webpage and see a laundry list of services, including
Whole Home Renovation, Custom Home Building, Kitchen & Bath Renovation, Basement Finishing, Deck & Landscaping, Exterior Renovation and so on and so forth.
I’m not sure where to go from there. Back in the pioneer days of building websites, this strategy may have made sense, but Google has helped us all find information more efficiently. We expect to find it easily or we’ll move on.
Now when people search, they want one thing. One service. Either they are looking for Kitchen & Bath Renovation or for Custom Home Building, not both.
Consider what will happen if this company doesn’t make a change:
1) When potential clients land on the website and can’t quickly find the services they want, they’re not going to bother digging around. They’ll very likely leave and move to the next website offered by Google.
2) When Google indexes this website, trying to understand what it is all about, it’ll get confused, so to speak, by all the different services listed on that one page. Confusion will push the company down the coveted list of search results when somebody searches for one of the services it offers.
So what is the right way to describe services on a company website?
The answer is simple — break up your services.
List the main service the company provides and create a page for each and every one of its related services. Give each service a clear, simple, and keyword-friendly name. You want to satisfy both Google and your visitors.
Make it easy for everyone to find the services you offer and what to do once they find you (we always recommend putting your contact information on every page of your website).
Looking for some examples? Reach out to us and we’ll share with you some of our favorite websites that do this well.
