It’s easy to forget that search engines index more than just a site’s homepage. In fact, multiple pages within a site, if not all of them, become part of a search engine’s database. Depending on a user’s search term, they may be just as likely to enter your site from somewhere within its many pages as they would from your homepage. A user who enters the term ‘rhinoplasty’ may enter your plastic surgery site from your homepage, from an informational page about the rhinoplasty procedure, from a page of before-and-after rhinoplasty pictures, or from a page on post-rhinoplasty guidelines. This doesn’t have to be a negative, in fact it can be used to your advantage, but it also has the potential to become confusing.
When a visitor performs a keyword search and enters your site through one of your interior pages, they can get frustrated. And frustrated visitors are often the first to leave and go in search of another site. One of the main things that can lead to this frustration involves your site’s navigation. Navigation must be clear, easy to use, and easy to understand. Every interior page on your site should have the following and these should be prominent and user-friendly:
- Navigation to other parts of the site.
- A clearly visible, easy to locate link to the homepage.
- Sub-navigation included in the link home.
- Descriptive link labels explaining what the site or page is about.
- Suggested click paths, such as a link to ‘read more articles’ on a page that has an article.
Title tags and page descriptions are also important. Every page should have an accurate title tag that is unique to the content on that page. Page descriptions should be genuine and honest without too much hype. Remember too, that when too many keywords are place in title and description tags, they may do well in search engines but they can also become illegible to the humans trying to read them.
Your interior pages can become just as important as your homepage. They can be used to attract attention, keeping your visitors interested enough to keep browsing or convincing them to become actual patients.