Save The Date:

If you’re an artist or creative, heads up: I'm doing a workshop with Sonoma fine artist Alex Cole on March 20th.

We're going to talk everything websites; specifically the unique challenges artists and creatives face with getting their work discovered by their ideal audience and turning that audience into buyers.

I first met the lovely Alex when our kids were in preschool together in Sonoma. Her work is stunning, and she’s done a banger job of creating a community around her art in addition to the art itself.

This is sure to be a fun, informative session.

Sign up for the workshop here:

workshop sign up

Continuing with the theme of discovery, I have a philosophical question for you:

If a website has no traffic, does it even exist?

I had this thought yesterday when I saw this gorgeous website.

Sorry for the Schrödinger's Cat or “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound” bit, but bear with me. 📦🐈🌲

This is the home page:

The entire homepage has no text other than navigation links. Ranking in organic search will be near impossible, which is why I’ve dubbed this site an “SEO desert”. 🌵

Homepage Goal

The goal of your homepage is to immediately let your audience know what you do and who you do it for. If you can't accomplish that within about 10 seconds, there is a high chance that they will leave your site.

In the subsequent sections of the home page, you introduce your audience to your business. You encourage them to take the Client's Journey and explore other pages with strategic CTAs (calls to action).

The goal is that before they leave, they “convert” by inquiring about working with you, booking an appointment, signing up for your newsletter, making a purchase etc.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First of all, the visitor has to find your site before they can take the Client's Journey .

Website SEO 101

If you've been with me for long and read what I have to say about SEO (search engine optimization), you know that the only way your ideal audience can find your site organically is through WORDS.

No words = no discoverability. And this site has (almost) no words.

It’s absolutely worth noting that to show you the homepage in its entirety, the only thing that I had to block out for anonymity is the logo. (The logo! - that’s all!)

That’s terrible for discoverability AND conversions.

This is undisputedly a gorgeous website. The imagery - both subject matter and photography- is truly spectacular. I'm a total interiors junkie, and I spent several minutes ogling the photos.📸

The fact remains that if you want to be discovered in search, a website must have:

1. Keywords that get the attention of search engines

2. Compelling copy that grabs and holds the attention of your website visitors once they get find your site.

Now let’s look at the services page.

That’s the entire services page. One image. One paragraph.

For the client journey to produce maximum conversions, the job of the services page is to reassure your ideal audience that you clearly understand their pain points/needs/desires and you are the best fit to solve their problem.

This happens through copy focused on your unique brand message paired with specific forms of social proof.

Then you explain your individual services, packages, and offers in detail, followed by a call to action button.

You may say, “Does it really matter that there isn't a call to action button here?”

It may matter less on an interior design site where the visuals are key to selling the service, but you might also be surprised to learn that Implementing a specific, clear CTA can potentially boost conversion rates by over 100%. Wisernotify

Let's back up again though, because here’s the rub:

The visitor still has to find the website to begin with.

Again, what has to happen to get found in search? Say it with me! 📣

Keywords and compelling copy! ☑️

This brings me to my last point when I thought:

“Well, the website designer was clearly going for a minimalist look. I get it. So then surely with such a minimal amount of text and CTAs, they’ll have SEO-ed the *ish out of the imagery to try to compensate.”

By that, I mean adding descriptive file names and ALT text/descriptions with keywords to every single image.

So I right clicked a couple images and clicked “inspect”.

Nope! Those file names are SEO bankrupt. 🙄

No descriptive file names, no alt text. This is the point where I started having a conversation with the web designer in my head with strong words and finger wagging.

So the moral of the story is this:

You can have the most gorgeous website in your niche, but if no one finds it, it isn’t serving its purpose, which is to generate consistent, quality leads 24-7, even in your sleep. 🛌🏻

Thanks for sticking with me. If you’ve read this far and want to learn more about high converting websites and how to get one for your service business, click here.

If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a note below. Be sure to check back for my response (I always respond) since no notification is sent.

Is Your Website An SEO Desert?