Your homepage is expected to tell visitors everything they should know about your business as well as do the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO. Sounds like a tall order, huh? There is a lot of pressure on your homepage to attract visitors and convince them to delve deeper into your website. So, how can you develop a homepage that accomplishes all you need it to? We’re breaking it down.
Establish your brand identity right away with your logo and other branded elements to acclimate the user to the look and feel of your business, and keep your layout simple, clean, and easy to navigate. Navigation should be easily visible and appear in a logical sequence. Be sure to include all major sections of your site, and think about what pages visitors will most want to visit. Including key pages of your site in your navigation also helps search engines find your content and understand the overall theme of your site.
The visitor needs to know what you’re offering; it’s that simple. It may be obvious, but it’s a big must-have for your homepage. Your homepage should clearly explain what you do and why your visitors should care. Write content that leaves users with no doubt about what you’re offering them.
Leave out the fluff and get to the point. You want to give a complete overview of your website, using the smallest number of words possible. Requiring visitors to comb through excessive text could lose them. Keep it short, and don’t get too fancy with your word choices. Don’t use a five-dollar word when a 50-cent word will do is a good rule of thumb.
Incorporate keywords throughout your homepage where you can. Focus on a handful of keywords and use them where they fit naturally. Avoid forcing too many keywords into your content—known as keyword stuffing. This will make your copy feel stale and unpalatable. Successfully sprinkling a small number of select keywords throughout your homepage, however, will strengthen your overall SEO.
Headers not only call out important sections on a webpage, but they also break up blocks of text and affect SEO. If you can, use important keywords in your headers. The keyword no-stuffing-rule still applies: keep it natural and don’t force it. You should only have one H1 tag toward the top of your homepage (the title tag), and it should reflect your brand and overall theme. From there, you can use H2, H3, and H4 tags as needed to highlight the important elements of your homepage content.
Much like headings, visuals provide the user a brief relief from text. Too much copy on your homepage can overwhelm your visitors. Use relevant images where you can to further draw users in. Try to use images in conjunction with small blocks of text. This gives visitors something stimulating to look at while still reading about what you’re offering.
CTAs should be integral components of your homepage (and the entire site, for that matter). Your homepage offers a concise overview of your whole site, but you want to encourage the user to dig deeper into your website to learn more. This is where CTAs come into play.
Place buttons throughout your homepage that take the user directly to another page for more information. The idea is to do the work for them. If you have a brief description about a featured product on your homepage, save the visitor time and trouble of searching for it by putting a button right underneath your description that takes them directly to this product.
Your homepage sets the tone for your entire website. It should be clean, concise, and offer a good user experience. By the time a visitor scrolls to the bottom of your homepage, you should have clearly answered their essential who, what, and why questions about your business and provided clear and easy access to further information.
Blue Frog Marketing's experienced team can help you develop your homepage as well as your entire website. Our web designers, web developers, and content specialists will work together to create your new website that incorporates current best online marketing practices, and our inbound strategists can help you develop an overall marketing strategy. We have offices in Des Moines, Denver, and Huron. Contact us today!