Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
-
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together.
Our nav is currently like so :
home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact
Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services.
I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc).
Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages).
I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
-
It depends how many services you offer. Right now you're listing 3 and that fits fine in your navigation, but at some point you may want to add more services.
I think what you're doing now works, but I'd create a services menu if you have other services.
We can only give you opinions on this forum, so you should test both and see what works better.
-
I think you are probably over-thinking this one. Adding another all-in-one services page isn't likely to move the needle. Instead of thinking about making another page I would focus on the ideas Doug is suggesting in creating link-worthy content ideas that show use cases for your products/services. For example if you do a case study featuring one of your customers and how you helped them you could probably get it picked up on a few relevant industry blogs and also get your customer to share it socially and maybe even link back to it from their blog. I would focus on giving people reasons to link to your content!
Hope this helps!
-
Hi, I'd take a step back and think about what your customers are looking for.
You've got to find a way to joining the dots between the problems your customers are trying to solve (their goals) and the services you offer.
If they're looking for something that's going to "get them more business" then they won't necessarily jump to the conclusion that they need video, from you!
This is where you need to have additional pages that connect the things that you can do with the goals of your customer.
So as well as creating individual services pages (which explain the things that you do, and the benefits of your services) you also need to create offerings or solutions pages.
Here you can explain your value proposition, the benefits of your approach and how you can utilise the various services that you offer to deliver the goals that your customers are seeking
Do you target specific niches? for example, web marketing for dentists - You can optimise these offering pages for these niches (both keywords and conversion. You can have a much more relevant conversation with the prospect and show that you understand the particular problems/issues that exist in their niche/industry.
Individual service pages are great for targeting those customers who already know what they want - but you're really talking to people further down the conversion funnel...
If you met your customers in person - how would you sell your offerings....
Does that help at all? Probably not!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
ECWID Ecommerce Sitemaps (Lack of)
Does anyone know if the lack of sitemaps on ECWID built sites is a negative for SEO? Does Google somehow index these sites and do they penalize because sites can't include the urls in sitemaps? Also, any idea how to build a sitemap to include ECWID shopping carts?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect when using Wordpress for your Blog?
I have a site entirely done in html, no CMS used. The blog page however, is wordpress. Wondering if this will effect us negatively in terms of SEO, having the blog that is linked to our site, a wordpress site. My gut is absolutely not, but the questions was asked....what do you think?
Web Design | | cschwartzel0 -
Forms vs. Buttons
We are an IT services firm. A conversion for us is completion of a lead form. Generally speaking, is it better to have a form to fill out in the sidebar on most organic pages, or a button that takes you to a lead form? I see both used, which do you think converts better?
Web Design | | CsmBill0 -
Legitimate hidden text and H1s are "OK?" Show me the data!
I'm trying to promote the SEO perspective during a site redesign so I'm researching the impact of design requests: Embedding text in graphic headers and applying to the graphics to get the SEO value Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs. SEOmoz uses these techniques on their ranking report and most of what I read in teh forums says it is OK to hide text if your motives are pure and the text displays in a text-only browser. But I do SEO, not SEOK. I want to optimize, not just avoid penalties. And I try to make decisions based on data, not just anecdotes. Are there any studies out there on the effects these hidden-text topics? How much difference DOES it make to have the text exposed? Since there is potential for spam with these techniques, why would Google give the same rank to pages with and without hidden text? When I'm balancing UX and SEO, I want to clearly define the trade-off. What have you done when faced with this dilemma?
Web Design | | integra-telecom0 -
How does using a CMS (i.e. Wordpress/Drupal) affect backlinks and SEO?
So I need to build a website with over 100 pages in it. Elements of the design will probably be moved around and or tested so I need to use a CMS. It's pretty much a review site so while the content will remain static I'd like to employ A/B testing to mess with conversion rates. Wordpress has a plugin for that even. So I'm just wondering, since CMS pages are pretty much created on spot and not retrieved from a library, how this affects backlinks and anchor text? How exactly does the external website point to yours if the URL is dynamically generated? Or am I misunderstanding something? Please recommend any extra resources as well if you can.
Web Design | | seochump0 -
Home page is not the highest ranking page?
Our websites do not have the home page as the first page in the search engines. It's something benign like the privacy policy page or the directions page! I've thought of adding no index to the privacy page, but then the directions or contact page would show up instead of the home page. One odd thing I've noticed, is that on our link to the home page on our menu and footer, the link is /default.aspx?mb=rte. But that shouldn't make a difference and default.aspx should rank first, right? What can we do to fix this?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Are links from main page to inner pages will affect on ranking?
About 3 weeks ago I converted index.html to index.php. Both are 301 redirect to main url. Also I have about 70 links on main page pointing to internal pages. The Website is about 11 years old,and was on active link building . Is this conversion from html to php and also 70 links pointing to inner pages will affect on ranking?Since all links are passing juice to inner pages.
Web Design | | LosAngelesLimo0 -
Siloing and navigation menu linking
Still trying to understand siloing and how it relates to displaying links in the navigation menu. I'm working on optimizing a site for a lawyer friend. His site consists of 4 top level pages - index, attorney profile, practice areas, and contact. Then, there are 2 folders that contain all the 2nd-level pages for his 2 practice areas - personal injury and business litigation. The website in question is www(dot)comitzlaw(dot)com. From what I read about siloing before taking the 30-day SEOMoz trial (which I really like so far, by the way), I set the main (left hand) menu up as follows: The 4 top level pages only display the "collapsed" navigation menu, which only links to the index pages for personal injury and business litigation. Go anywhere in personal injury, and all pages link to the "expanded" personal injury navigation (links to auto accidents page, wrongful death, motorcycle accidents, etc.) but the "collapsed" business litigation section and vice versa for business litigation's links to personal injury. I did this because, as I understand, it keeps the practice area links on topic (like in a car sales example where you want a Ford section linking to Ford pages and Chevy pages linking to Chevy pages). Just wondering if anyone thinks I have this set up right. Wondering if the home page should display the "expanded" navigation menu instead or if all top level pages should show the expanded? Appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks.
Web Design | | c2g0