Free Web Design Advice

This may seem obvious, but determining the structure of your site (i.e., what pages you want to include) is often overlooked by those planning a new website.  Proceeding with a build without a plan is like going to Home Depot and buying lumber and nails before you have a blueprint for your house.

How DO you know what pages you should have on your site?  We recommend three strategies; do all of them.

(Estimated time to complete:  2-4 hours)

Strategy 1:
Think of all the services/products that you offer.

1. Create a list of the them.  Plan to create one page per item on your list.
2. Add other pages that are common to most websites.  You might consider:
   - About Us/Company History
   - Contact Us
   - Privacy Policy
   - Philosophy
   - Why Choose Us
   - Awards/Affiliations
   - Map/Locations/Directions
   - Warranty
   - Testimonials/Reviews

Strategy 2:
Visit your online competition (remember to search with your target search phrase)

To go with the example that we started with when exploring SEO terms, we will play like we have a roofing company in Fort Worth/Dallas that specializes in commercial roofs.  Let’s do a search in Google for “Dallas Fort Worth commercial roofing”.  Here are the first few results we get:

Visiting the first site (Pitts Roofing) we can see the pages that we might consider adding to our list:

• Commercial Roof Repair
• Commerial Roof Replacement
• Roofing products:  Single Ply Systems
• Roofing products:  Roof Coating
• Roofing products: Modified Bitumen Systems
• Roofing products:  Tar and Gravel Systems
• Energy Saving Roofs
• Free Estimate
• Gutters & Downspouts
• Coping
• Emergency Repairs
• Roof Repairs
• Partial Roof Replacement
• Roof Penetration Repair
• Roof Checkup

When we go to Ferris Roofing, we get these ideas for pages:

• Project Gallery
• Video
• Roofing Product Manufacturers
• News
• Press Releases
• Employment

From Mount Auburn Roofing, we get these page ideas:

• New roof installation
• Roofing Services
• Roof Inspections
• Commercial Roofing

From Lone Star Roofing, we get these page ideas:

• Thermal Roof Coatings
• Metal Roofs
• Buit Up (Hot Tar) Roofing
• Maintenance Contracts
• Online Bid Request

Strategy 3:
Create one page for each region you serve

In this case, we will create two pages:

• Fort Worth Commercial Roofing
• Dallas Commercial Roofing

The Result

Take all of your ideas and divide them into logical categories.

You know how you go to a website and you see a top navigation bar that lists the “main parts” of the website?  If you hover over one of those tabs, you will see a drop-down navigation.  You have just witnessed how pages are grouped into categories.  We divide pages into categories to make site navigation easier for the visitor.

By using the three strategies outlined above, here is the proposed site structure for our commercial roofing company in Dallas/Fort Worth.

Homes

About Us (Category page)

• Why Choose Us
• Company History & Philosophy
• Awards/Affiliations
• Location/Map
• Warranty

Commercial Roofing Services (Category page)

• Fort Worth Commecial Roofing
• Dallas Commercial Roofing
• Roof Repairs
• Roof Replacement
• Roof Penetration Repair
• New Roof Installation
• Roof Check-up
• Roof Inspections
• Emergency Repairs

Roofing Types/Products (Category page)

• Single Ply Systems
• Roof Coating
• Modified Bitument Systems
• Tar and Gravel Systems
• Energy Saving Roofs
• Gutters & Downspouts
• Coping
• Thermal Roof Coatings
• Metal Roofs
• Flat Roofs

Our Work  (Category page)

• References/Testimonials
• Videos
• Project Gallery

News/Blog

Employment

Contact Us

• Privacy Policy

Free Bid Request

This site will have a total of 37 pages.

For SEO purposes, you should expect to write SEVERAL paragraphs on each page, discussing the topic of that page throughly.

Tune in later for more details on writing copy for your website that is search engine friendly.

Aside from popularity, having a site FULL of rich text is the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to ensure the best natural ranking in the search engines for your website.

For the purpose of illustration, we will give you our rules as if you have a company that does commercial roofing repair.  Once you grasp the basic idea, you can appy these concepts to your own site.

Rule 1:  Don’t be too generic

It will be next to impossible to rank highly for a single search term like “roofing.” One problem with single-word search terms is that they are used by many types of businesses. Any company that offers roofing supplies, roofing products, roofing installation, or other roofing services is going to be using and competing in the generic term, “roofing.”  Secondly, it is often big corporations, who have huge link networks and large SEO/web development budgets that will have already firmly secured those highly-prized rank positions.

Lost in a sea of irrelevant search results after inputting in a generic search, a consumer will eventually use a more specific search phrase when looking for a specific product or service. That’s where you try to capture them.  If your company repairs roofs on commercial buildings, then the search phrase “commercial roof repair” is a much better search phrase to optimize because it is more specific to what you actually do (and you do not have to compete with websites that are not your true competitors.)

Rule 2:  Be regional if your business is regional

Because your services are location-specific (you don’t repair roofs in New York) your search phrase should also be location-specific. “Fort Worth Commercial Roof Repair” is even more specific to your audience and prevents you from having to compete with New York roof repair companies.

Rule 3:  Test Your Search Phrase

Put your search phrase into Google and look at your online competitors for this term. If the results are companies that do not offer the same kind of services you offer (where you offer it,) then maybe the search phrase is not specific enough to what you do. If the results are your local competitors, then you probably have it just right.

Rule 4:  Scope Out the Competition and Do Better

Once you have determined your target search phrase, go back to Google and input your search phrase.  Visit the the five top-ranking web sites.  (Ignore the “sponsored” listings; look at the websites that rank at the top of the list, naturally.)  At each site, look at how much they talk about this product/service that you offer.  You should plan to write about it more than they do to rank higher than them.

Rule 5:  Repeat rules 1-4 for each term you want to optimize on your website.

In this case, you will also create text (preferably one page  on your site for each term you use) for:

• Fort Worth commercial flat roofs
• Fort Worth flat roof repair
• Fort Worth commercial roof installation
• Fort Worth roof repair estimate
• etc.  You get the picture.

Tune in later for more details on rules for copy-writing for a search-engine-friendly website!