11 Mar Why Your Website Should Have A Separate Page For Each Service

If you’re the owner of a small business, you may have put a good deal of thought into its website when you and/or your web design agency first created it. But every now and then you should check in to see if your website could be doing more to bring more customers your way. A good place to start is your services tab! Does it open a single webpage listing all of your enterprise’s services? Should this be the case, you’re doing yourself a disservice, so to speak! Even if you offer only two services, each should be on its very own separate page. Here’s why.

It Will Help Your Website Rank Higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

As Aime Cox – founder of Studio Cotton – writes, “Google is constantly comparing your website to every other website when deciding how high you should rank. Every website that better matches a searcher’s query will appear higher than you do. Every website that is a less good match, will appear below you. Therefore, if you want to rank higher for your dream customers’ searches – it’s your job to make sure that the content on your website is at least as thorough and specific as your competitors’.”

Copywriter and web consultant Gil Andrews elaborates on this particular advantage.

“If you also would like your service pages to rank in search for a specific keyword relevant for a particular service, you can only do that by having individual service pages. For example, my “Website conversion audit” service page ranks #2 for a relevant keyword and regularly brings me clients. It wouldn’t have been possible if I only had a common Services page.

“A common Services page can only be optimized for a broader keyword, which will automatically be more competitive. Usually, it can’t be optimized for a keyword that corresponds to a particular service, as it contains the information about all of your services … Generally speaking, you’d need to optimize your page for a relevant long-tail keyword (a longer and more specific search query) to have a chance to rank.”

Caitlin Strempel – founder and CEO of Rising Ranks – offers this observation:

“A well-optimized site will funnel traffic through multiple entry points. This means that your website visitors may not always land on your homepage. If you optimize your site correctly, there could be many different landing pages that visitors can arrive on though Google, social media, etc.

”If you offer a variety of services, having a separate page for each service allows for multiple entry points to your site. This also means that you’ll have more pages indexed with Google which will boost your SEO.

“Each one of your services solves a different type of problem or fills a particular need for your customers. With separate pages, you can fully explain what your service is and focus on optimization principles that will help you to rank for the keywords that are specific to that particular offer.”

What a Good Services Page Should Contain

Hopefully, these digital marketing all-stars have convinced you that your small business’s website really does need a separate page for each service! But now you may be wondering what kind of information those pages should contain. You know your business inside and out, but communicating your services to prospective customers who might not be familiar with it can be challenging. And if people are familiar with the types of services you offer, you could very well feel like it’s such common knowledge that you really don’t need to explain them.

Nothing could be further from the truth – which is why you should hire a digital marketing agency to do the job. But we’re getting ahead of our take-home message and blatant self-promotion! Julia McCoy –president of Content at Scale – provides the following key components of a great services page in her article for Search Engine Land.

1. Long-form, descriptive, benefits-focused copy for each service offered

• What is included in the service/offer? What does the customer get, in a nutshell, after they buy? For example, if you sell website design services, what does that entail? A website audit, page design/development, rewriting website copy?
• What problem are you solving for the customer? What larger problem are you solving, beyond what the service accomplishes at face value? 
• Who is your service/offer for? Describe the person who will benefit most from your service. This is your ideal customer – when they read this description, they should see themselves!
• What are the long-term benefits? What positive outcomes will reverberate for your customer long after completing your services?
• Why is your brand uniquely qualified to offer this service? What’s your backstory? How did your company form, and how did you come to sell XYZ? What experience, education, or combination of these two things has shaped your service(s)? Tell a story.
• What are the most frequently asked questions you get about your service? Answer them on your service page.

2. Testimonials or reviews

Next, prove that your services work or deliver your promised benefits. Adding customer testimonials or reviews to your service page is the easiest way to do this.

For example, embed a video of a customer talking about their experience with your service. Or, add a customer quote alongside their photo.

Along with these pieces of social proof, if your brand is a B2B, consider adding a list of the businesses and brand names you’ve called clients. You’ll see this technique on most B2B sites, but that’s because it’s effective.

3. Visuals

Not every service page needs visuals, but very few wouldn’t benefit from adding an image, an embedded video, or some other element that adds visual interest. Consider how your visuals can further help your prospect understand your offer for service pages. 

4.  Conversion-friendly design

A service page with great content won’t perform well if the design and layout are cluttered, confusing, busy, or hard to read.

5. Calls to action (CTAs)

Lastly, include targeted calls to action (CTAs) throughout your service page. Ideally, they should stand out and be formatted as buttons your prospects can click on.

Where should these CTAs lead? That depends on your service and how ready your prospects are to buy. If the audience coming to this page is primed and ready to buy, your CTAs can point directly to a checkout page … If the audience coming to your service page isn’t quite ready to buy, consider adding CTAs to talk to your sales team or get a free consultation.

The Take-Home Message and Our Blatant Self-Promotion

As you’ve learned, adding a separate page on your website for each service your business offers can provide numerous competitive advantages in driving traffic to your site – as well as your door, if your enterprise is brick-and-mortar – and boosting conversions. But as you perhaps also see, this is a job for the pros – like our team at Virtual Stacks Systems!

Our full-service digital marketing agency offers experienced website design and redesign, SEO marketing, content writing, social media marketing, PPC advertising  and so much more! We welcome the opportunity to help you meet your marketing objectives and succeed. Every small business is unique, and so are our solutions!

Contact us today to get started!