Product and service pages: do they matter for SEO?

The short answer is: yes, they do, but you’ve been using them wrong.

We’re working with a client right now and their new content is ranking no problem, even when their core site pages are limited.

The primary purpose of product and service pages is to provide information to potential customers about what you offer. That’s it. When it comes to ranking, these pages may not be crucial.

Because we know search engines can crawl and index your website without them. And if you’re offering web development, are you really going to get your web development page on the first page of Google? Nah.

So why do product and service pages matter for SEO? Why bother creating these pages?

One reason is their potential to add relevancy to your site. Product and service pages can act as hubs for linking and topics should cluster around them. You increase your chances of improving search results for blog posts about web development if your core offering is clearly web development.

But what if your product or service isn’t very unique? Won’t you just be competing with other companies for the same keywords?

Totally. That’s why rather than optimizing your pages for specific keywords, think about your core category as a business and how to display authority and expertise through your service pages.

It’s also great user experience. Provide valuable information for your potential customers and really dig deep into your core offerings. They want to know what you’re offering and how it can benefit them. As a result, so will Google.

As a rule of thumb, whatever topic you’re writing about for your blog post should easy be able to link back to one core service offering. If it doesn’t or there’s a disconnect, you’ll have a harder time ranking that page. Writing about app development but don’t have a core page dedicated to app development? It’s not going to rank well.

Start creating many diverse offering pages and cluster all other content around them.

Creating topic clusters has become an increasingly popular SEO strategy. According to HubSpot, “A topic cluster is a method of organizing site content by breaking it into subtopics that all link to a main topic.” This strategy can help your website rank higher for a particular topic by demonstrating to search engines that your site is an authority on that topic.

So make sure your pages provide valuable and detailed information about your products or services. Include high-quality images and videos, as well as customer reviews and testimonials. Don’t worry too much about keywords or optimizing for technical SEO.

Just make sure its clear what you offer and that you’re damn good at it.

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