4 things you can do right now to improve your website home page and why
For most sites, the home page is by far the most visited. The visitor segments are the most broad here too: random search engine traffic, sometimes advertising ends up here (though I, personally, recommend against that), sometimes a link from someone’s blog ends up going to your home page. All of these wide, varied audiences need to be directed and channeled to the place that will help them get something done.
Too often, home pages end up getting fractured and fragmented due to a lack of focus. These tips should help you get focused.
Here’s a quick list of simple things you can do to make your real estate home page more effective. To be honest, several of these tips could work for any business site with a little tweaking.
- Have one main headline that tells users what can be done on your site. Resist the urge to use the generic “Welcome to my homepage” stuff. People aren’t on your homepage to feel welcome, they are there to accomplish a task. You can’t make them feel welcome by saying “Welcome.” You can, however, make them feel welcome by making it easier for them to accomplish their task (like buy or sell a property).
- Have a page title (the text at the very top of the browser) that relates to your headline and contains the search term you want most. This will help in two ways: it will help your search ranking and will improve the usability of your listing in the search engine result page.
- Include a clear call-to-action. You probably have a desired outcome for people who come to your site. Know what that outcome is and make it easy for your site visitors do what you would like them to do.
- Include a visual and direct link to the thing you want to sell most, like a featured property listing, a page with your listings on it, a page with listings that you like to represent, whatever it is that you do best. Some of your site visitors know exactly what they are looking for and will likely skip over your offer. But other visitors will appreciate your suggestion to get them started down the path to do business with you.
What are some other things you can do to make your home page better?
Good advice. The clear call to action is possibly the most overlooked
aspect of a website (and blog). Some sites also make the visitor dig for contact information. It should be easy to spot (on every page?).
Thanks for stopping by Joeseph,
Call-to-action on every page is my current mantra. So many times people want a site but they aren’t entirely clear how to make the most of it, and that call-to-action is the starting point.
G
Very nice to share information to better our sites, please keep me in the loop.
Brent Drouin
No problem Brent, writing posts here helps us as well. Don’t be afraid to let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to write about in the future.
g
Well, nice to have some direction. I am still struggling to understand the implications of blogging on performance ranking. Certainly I am now seeing the complexity of trying to compete in my local market. I will try to keep things simple and find some more excellent websites to help me. Your simple list is clear, and should be read prior to any attempt to start writing ones own website front page.
Good luck John! Keeping yourself focused on your local market will help a lot. How blogs play into your ranking is a whole topic unto itself. But the short version is: start blogging about local stuff (and ideally local real estate if that’s what you’re doing).
Thanks for stopping by!
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