Best SEO Practices for Homepage, About, and Contact pages

[Ted J.]

Hi all,

I'm about to rework these pages for my website, optimizing for local SEO, as I have a retail brick and mortar gift shop. Surprisingly, I didn't find a lot of information about this trio of pages. (blog post anyone?) I'm guessing they work together like an SEO symphony. (or maybe 3 piece rock band?) Just hoping to get some tips and tricks from the gurus.

Thank you!
Ted

 

[Phil Rozek]

Hey @Ted J., here's a post I did all about the homepage: Top 10 Ways Local Business Owners Botch the All-Important Homepage, and How You Can Get Yours Right | LocalVisibilitySystem.com

"About" pages can pull some weight in cases where you can make it a bio page of a specific person. As in "About Portland OR Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Jane Doe" or "About Portland Master Electrician John Doe." And the content isn't just about the person's hobbies, but also talks about his or her qualifications, how he/she got into the field, etc. Not sure what form that kind of page would take on your site.

I wouldn't say there's much of an SEO play for a "contact" page. It won't rank for much or anything, and in most cases the whole point of SEO is to get the right people to that page after they entered your site on some other page. Anyway, my main suggestion is to put the form or phone number or click-to-call button (or whatever) at the very top, above the fold. Not below a big, slow Google Maps iframe, driving directions, etc.

 

[Ted J.]

Thanks Phil! A helpful blog post!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Homepage - Phil nailed it. I'll add it's typically about your main service and main location. It should be used to rank for your main keyword and location.

About - I would make this as robust as possible. 1) more people click on it to learn about you and your service than you might think. Give them a ton of info. Many of your competitors probably have little to nothing. Comfortability with a local business is one of the top reasons people choose a local business. 2) The about page is becoming a bigger deal with YMYL updates. And if you think YMYL is just for health and finance, it maybe be for now but maybe not for long. Pump that thing up.

Contact - make sure it has a phone number on it and a contact form. Pretty standard but Google has a reason not to trust people that they can't get in touch with.

 

[Stefan Somborac]

About - I would make this as robust as possible. 1) more people click on it to learn about you and your service than you might think.

Check Google Analytics >> Behaviour >> Behaviour Flow. I think you'll find that the majority of traffic lands on your homepage, clicks to <some other page> and then returns to the homepage. From there, the traffic fractures off in a bunch of different directions.

Importantly, for a large number of sites that I've worked on, <some other page> is ABOUT.

In case that's not clear: in my experience, a lot of website visitors make the ABOUT page their first click. I'm totally with @JoshuaMackens on this one!

 

[Ted J.]

Thanks, Stefan!

 

[Ted J.]

Thanks Joshua! That's great info about the ABOUT page. I will definitely be working on ours. Much appreciated!

 

[Ampere]

"About" pages can pull some weight in cases where you can make it a bio page of a specific person. As in "About Portland OR Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Jane Doe" or "About Portland Master Electrician John Doe." And the content isn't just about the person's hobbies, but also talks about his or her qualifications, how he/she got into the field, etc.

I am an electrician and own a small residential electrical contracting company, so what you said hits home.

I don't mention myself all that much on my website, just in little quips like "owner oversees all installations". I don't want to make it seem like my company is too small and it's all about me.

With that said, should I make the About page about me personally? My personal qualifications like you said? Or keep it focused on the company like it is now?

To be honest, I was thinking about getting rod of the About page on my website and just putting that info on the Homepage. But now I am rethinking that.

 

[djbaxter]

Don't get rid of it, especially in an industry like yours where potential customers tend to worry about the ethics and integrity of services - plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, etc.

For small businesses especially, the About page can help a lot to personalize your business and showcase your experience. A photo can be even better - put a face to the business. You can label that with a name as "owner/operator".

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I would create 2, one for your business and one for you, and interlink them to each other. People like to know who they're doing business with.

For the one with you, I'd mention education, experience, license, insurance information, how many customers served, a job map, client testimonials, everything you can think of to make yourself credible. As Google's algorithms increase in sophistication, they will be able to more and more detect authority. And one of their main concerns is "who is behind a website". They do this in the health and financial sectors currently via algorithm and I expect once they nail that down they will roll it out to every sector. So get a jump on that.

But don't forget what I said above, people will love it too if they know you.

 

[Phil Rozek]

With that said, should I make the About page about me personally? My personal qualifications like you said? Or keep it focused on the company like it is now?

I suggest doing both on the same page: some personal info and some business info. You'll want to focus on the interesting overlap between those two, by addressing questions like "What made you become an electrician?" and "If you haven't always been an electrician, what did you do before?" and "Why do you enjoy it?"

In my experience, that's what people want to know. Sure, they like knowing about your hobbies and such insofar as they like knowing you're not a robot, but beyond that they don't care much. (And why should they? They don't know you yet.) Their main concern still is, "What is it about this guy and his wiring that means he's the best electrician for me?"