Homepage Optimisation—What’s to Improve on a Homepage?
Can You SEO Optimize Your Homepage Without an SEO Strategist?
You have to admit: you can't make things on your own.
Even if you invest a lot of time to catch up and learn all there is about SEO and copywriting, there’ll still be something to tweak.
You’ll never be too sure that if your way of SEO optimization is the right way.
What if you’re short on time, but have the means to invest?
Say, you'd like to SEO optimize your homepage, because frankly that’s the most relevant part of your website.
Along with your service page.
So, if you’re beginning to SEO optimize on your own, interlink these two web pages.
Use an anchor link that says what visitors will find there.
I keep saying: your homepage is the reception.
It's your shop’s window.
For a buyer to step in, or a guest to stay at a hotel (now we’re SEO copywriting for hotels), you must also be a decoration artist.
Your window must attract!
Your doorstep must be so inviting that the guest won’t think of leaving it to search for another place to buy from or stay at.
A Case - Before and After Homepage Optimization
Let’s look at a concrete case. It’s websites like these I often optimize for a given keyword.
So,
What was the situation before homepage optimisation?
You see above that the client for whom I’ve been writing blog posts, and also did homepage optimisation, had some idea what to do in order to relatively perform well SEO-wise.
The client knew that there was a meta description of the page (160 characters max) and a title (60 characters max) (here’s a You Tube video on how to choose your blog post title, for instance).
It doesn’t matter that much if there were more characters in each than allowed; the most important thing is that the KEYWORD was inside in those descriptions.
The problem, though, was in the HEADING SECTION of the text on the homepage (in the picture it’s under CONTENT).
There was No H1 ! No heading 1, which determines the main subject of the page.
Here I’ve added the H1, which I then corrected.
I used AHREFS to see how the client named each section on the homepage.
If you decide to go on your own path with homepage optimisation, calculate at least 1 month of not-so-rigid learning, taking in all you can from different online tutorials and free webinars.
On-page SEO optimisation, is not difficult.
What On-Page SEO Homepage Optimisation Really Means
Is theire a guideline to homepage optimisation, some steps you can follow?
Well...
Insert Headings into the Content - These + Title Help Google
1 Prepare to think in HEADING terms.
Headings after homepage optimisation
This is how the headings look after I took over
Write out your content and divide sections to fit under headlines which mention the main keyword.
A heading must be of definite length. Optimally, headings should have less than 11 words and a maximum of 60 characters. Just like titles.
The text under each heading should not be more than 5 sentences, copy experts say, though I tend to write longer blocks of text.
It’s important that the content expands the idea which is touched upon in the heading.
An example:
Book a crewed yacht charter - No need to fear lack of privacy (acting as H1)
has
12 words (too much actually) + 60 characters (with spaces)
2 Describe every image you put onto the page.
Visuals that accompany the text should all be named properly (no number or letter combinations that have no meaning).
Alt tags are spaces for that.
You must add the title and a short description of your image containing the keyword you want to rank for on Google and other search engines.
An interesting fact that can influence you if you want to rank higher on other search engines, not Google:
According to findings, Google’s search market share in the US is 77.52% (as of March 2024).
3 Add other media too apart from images, and don’t forget to describe them so that the descriptions have the relevant keywords identified earlier, before writing the homepage copy.
Media could be: illustrations, graphs, videos etc.
Adding a variety of media can be crucial for overtaking competitors who rank with the same keyword.
4 Always have a CTA (a call to action button, saying what visitors should do after they read the text) at the end.
The CTA should point to separate page within your website, where visitors can either fill something in or learn more about the service you provide.
I’ll put a CTA right here and invite you to look at how I perform homepage optimisation for my clients: