Decide what the page is for before writing a word
One page, one search intent. If you sell SEO audits and SEO retainers, those are two pages, because someone searching for an audit wants something specific and quick while someone searching for ongoing work wants a relationship. Forcing both onto one page serves neither, and it creates the second problem: two of your own pages competing for the same search, so Google has to pick, and it often picks the weaker one.
Write down three things before drafting. Who is this for. What will they type. What do I want them to do at the end. If you cannot answer the middle one in the words a customer would use — not your industry’s words — you are not ready to write.
The structure, section by section
The first screen: what, for whom, what next
A visitor decides very quickly whether they are in the right place. The top of the page should name the service, name who it is for, and offer an obvious next step. That is it.
What it should not open with is the company. “Founded in 2015, we are a passionate team” answers a question nobody asked. The reader is not yet interested in you; they are checking whether you solve their problem.
The problem, in their words
A short section that describes the situation the reader is in. Done well, this is the most persuasive part of the page, because someone who feels understood keeps reading. Done badly it is filler.
The test: could a competitor paste this paragraph onto their site unchanged? If yes, it says nothing. Specifics come from talking to customers — the phrase a client used on a call is worth more than anything invented at a desk.
What is actually included
Be concrete. “Comprehensive SEO services” tells a buyer nothing and, worse, sounds like every other page they have open. A list of what is genuinely done — what is audited, what is produced, what gets reported — lets someone compare you against another quote, which is exactly what they are trying to do.
Concrete deliverables also let you charge properly, because the buyer can see what they are paying for.
How it works
A short, ordered description of what happens after they contact you. This lowers anxiety, which is the real barrier on most service pages. People hesitate because they do not know what they are starting — whether they will be locked in, whether they have to decide immediately, how long the first stage takes.
Three to five steps in plain language. Not a diagram with invented stage names.
Proof, and only proof you have
Whatever is genuinely true: results with permission, named clients if allowed, a testimonial, a description of the process behind a result. If you have none of it yet, the honest move is to be specific about method instead — how you approach the work, what you check, what you refuse to do. That is more convincing than a fabricated statistic, and infinitely safer, because a made-up number is the one claim a prospect can check and catch you on.
Price, or at least the shape of it
The most common objection to publishing price is that it varies. That is true and it is not a reason to say nothing. A range, a starting point, or a clear statement of what drives the number all help the reader self-select — and they save you the meetings with people who were never going to afford it.
A page with no price signal at all is one a certain kind of buyer will simply leave, assuming they cannot afford you.
Objections, handled directly
Every service has three or four recurring doubts. Answer them on the page rather than waiting for the call. This is also the most natural place for FAQ content, and it should be genuine questions you get asked — not questions written to contain a keyword.
One clear next step
One primary action, repeated where it makes sense. Offering four equally-weighted options is a way of asking the visitor to make a decision they came to you to avoid. Make the action small and specific: “Send me the site address and I will tell you what I find” beats “Contact us for a free consultation”, because it says exactly what will happen.
Writing so it ranks, without writing for a robot
Nothing above conflicts with SEO. The pieces that matter are small:
- Use the term people search, naturally, in the H1 and early in the page. Once, where it fits. Repeating it is not a ranking technique, it is a readability problem.
- Write headings that describe the section. Useful to a reader skimming and to a search engine working out what the page covers.
- Answer the adjacent questions. Someone searching for a service also wonders about cost, timeline and what is included. Covering those makes the page more complete for both audiences.
- Link to the detail. A service page should link to related services and to the proof, and be linked to from the pages above it.
- Write a description that earns the click. The meta description is not a ranking factor but it is an advert, and a generic one wastes the ranking you worked for.
There is no length target. The page is long enough when the questions are answered, and a short page that answers everything beats a long one padded to reach a number.
What to cut
- Opening lines about the industry being competitive. The reader knows.
- Claims with no evidence — “leading”, “trusted”, “award-winning” without the award.
- Stock phrases that survive being pasted onto any competitor’s site.
- A wall of logos with no explanation of what was done for whom.
- Any paragraph that does not answer, explain, demonstrate, reassure or direct.
That last one is the test worth applying to every paragraph. Most pages lose a third of their words to it and read better for it.
Before you publish
Read it as someone who has never heard of you and has two competitor pages open. Can they tell what you do, whether it is for them, roughly what it costs and what happens next? If any answer is no, that is the next edit.
If you want a structure to plan against, the content brief template is the one I use before writing anything. And if you would rather have someone look at what you already have, send me a link.