Which Pages a Corporate Website Actually Needs: Guide

The homepage lets a visitor work out in three seconds whether they are in the right place: who you are, what you do, what the next step is. The about page builds trust; the year founded, the team, the areas of work belong here as concrete facts, not as slogans.

A services or products page works better when each service gets its own subpage; trying to cover five services in three sentences on one page reads worse to both a visitor and a search engine than giving each one its own page.

A contact page is not just a form; a phone number, address, opening hours and ideally a map belong here. If a car showroom's site is missing an address and a map, a visitor who cannot picture finding the place may not even bother calling.

A testimonials or case studies page is often decisive at the decision stage, especially for a business selling to other businesses. Concrete examples of the kind of buildings a facilities management firm works with are more convincing than a generic line about happy clients.

A trade association needs membership and event calendar pages; a manufacturer needs technical documentation and a dealer locator. These pages should not be copied from a template; the questions a visitor actually asks most often decide what gets added.

• Trade association or non-profit: membership, event calendar, board, publications
• Manufacturer: product catalogue, technical documents, dealer locator, quality certificates
• Service business: detailed service pages, a pricing framework, FAQs
• Clinic or appointment-based business: service list, practitioners, online booking

Hierarchy is about which page links to which. The homepage links to services, services link to their own subpages, each subpage links to a relevant case study; skip that chain and both visitors and search engine crawlers get lost between pages.

The three-click rule is a decent starting point: any page should be reachable from the homepage in three clicks or fewer. A menu with too many top-level items is usually a sign the pages have not been grouped properly.

A page nobody visits, that never shows up in search, and whose content is out of date should not stay on the site; it adds maintenance work and sends a weak signal to search engines. An annual review usually shows which pages are pulling their weight and which have been forgotten.

A business with more than one branch or service area gives every branch its own page; rather than listing them all on one 'our branches' page, each branch's address, phone number, hours and area-specific detail sit on a page of their own.

For a car dealership chain, the London branch page and the Manchester branch page share the same template but carry different content, address, team, local stock; this makes it easier for both a visitor and a search engine to find the right branch.

Every page should carry exactly one H1, and it should state the page's topic clearly; more than one H1, or none at all, makes it harder for a search engine to classify the page correctly. The meta title does not have to match the H1 word for word, since it shows up in the search result and can be written separately to earn the click.

On a manufacturer's product page, the H1 might read 'Industrial Floor Coating' while the meta title reads something closer to search intent, 'Industrial Floor Coating: Pricing and Application', say; both describe the same topic but do different jobs.

The meta description follows the same discipline: it sums up the page's promise in a sentence or two and earns the click in the search result; writing one for every page individually, instead of copying and pasting, does not move rankings directly but does affect click-through rate.