When we’re setting up Google AdWords ads for clients, we match each advert with the relevant page on the website. (Not usually at too fine a level, but that’s another story). It would be daft to send visitors to the home page, and risk them not clicking through to the product being promoted. However, with the natural search results in Google, you might not get that option. Google might decide, in response to a search on “blue widgets”, to show your home page.
That’s still great – you’re in the mix, and perhaps sitting there proudly in the results above your competitors. But what actually happens when somebody searches for “blue widgets”, gets given your home page as a suggestion, and clicks through? Does your page actually shout out: “yes, here are the blue widgets you’re after”? Or are they required to click – hopefully – on “products”, find a menu item saying “widgets”, click on that, be sent to a page listing dozens of different colour widgets, find the blue one, and click on that?
If that’s the case, you’re going to lose many of them.
You know what the most important searches are for your company (or at least, you should do). Type each of them into Google. See what comes up. If it’s not you, then there’s work to be done elsewhere. If you are lucky enough to appear, click on the result and see where you’re taken. Is it the page where you’d want whoever made that particular search to be taken? If it isn’t, are you getting over the message – instantly – that the page they probably do want is right here on this site, and just a click away? You need to be.