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So, you’ve recently launched a WordPress site. Congrats! WordPress is the most popular hosting platform and content management system. Namely, more than 35% of all websites are hosted by WP. Online marketers adore WordPress because it’s easy to use and provides numerous customization options.
Now, you’ve already read a bunch of guides on how to build, design, and optimize your WP site. However, there is another factor you need to pay attention to – choosing the right pages for your website.
No matter if you’re running an online store, a company website, or a personal blog, these are the pages essential to your website.
1. About Page
The “About Me” page is especially important when building a personal website. It makes your brand more relatable and that tells your visitors who you are and what you do. The idea is to tell your story and convey your missions, values, and goals. It should also explain what people can expect to find there and highlight the purpose of your website.
The About page is also important for your rankings. For example, if you search for “Google,” you will see that the website’s About page ranks among the top three results in the SERPs.
As this is one of the first pages your visitors will open to learn more about you, it needs to be fully optimized. Here are a few elements every powerful About page should have:
- A catchy headline: Backlinko uses a headline on its About page as a solid unique selling point. The idea behind its “Want higher rankings and more traffic?” is simple – to make the About page headline strong, authentic, and benefit-driven.
- A sub-headline: It further explains the purpose of your brand. For example, below the headline, Backlinko adds: “You’ve come to the right place.”
- Benefits: People want to know how your site can benefit them. This is why you need to clearly emphasize what you do and how you can help them. If we get back to the example of Backlinko, we’ll see that its About page has an entire section called “How Backlinko Helps You Get Higher Rankings & More Traffic.”
- A supporting image: It tells your visitors who you are and shows the human side of your brand. This can be any kind of visual content – an animation, a photo, a brief video, a logo, or even an infographic.
- Storytelling: Don’t create your About page for the sake of SEO. This is a unique opportunity for you to engage customers and evoke emotions. Avoid packing your page with a bunch of keywords. You should also avoid excessive self-praise. Use case studies, in-house research, and customer testimonials to prove your brand value.
- A call-to-action: Now that you’ve grabbed a visitor’s attention and told your story, you want them to take a certain action. A call-to-action shouldn’t be generic. Make it strong and convincing, such as Backlinko’s “Want actionable SEO advice from me? Then hop on the newsletter.”
2. Contact Page
When optimizing your contact page, try to walk in your customers’ shoes. As a customer, what kind of content would you expect to see there? Here are a few essentials every successful contact page should have:
- Company name
- Company address
- Company phone number
- A contact form
- An email address
- Social media profiles
- A call-to-action
- Your staff and your business
If you have multiple locations, you will need to write your NAP (name, address, phone number) and email information for each business location. You also need to invest in the consistency of your business data. Update your data regularly across all online channels you use (your WP website, social accounts, Google My Business, local business directories, etc.).
3. FAQ Page
Did you know that over 40% of your customers now prefer self-service instead of human contact? Moreover, another research study says that 73% of customers prefer to use your company’s website over your social channels, chatbot, SMS, or live chat support.
With the growing number of customers wanting to solve problems without interacting with a support representative, having a detailed FAQ page and knowledge base is not optional anymore. Your FAQ page should maximize user experiences and drive conversions. Here are a few steps to take:
- Focus on relevant questions.
Just because you have a fully optimized and user-friendly FAQ page doesn’t mean it will work for your visitors. If your questions are terrible, investing in page design is purposeless. Many companies focus on questions like “When were you founded?” or “How many employees do you have?” These are the questions for the abovementioned About page. An FAQ page should help a customer find an answer to a specific question. Let’s take the example of Sephora that focuses on relevant questions related to their shipping policy, customer accounts, out of stock products, credit card problems, and so forth.
- Make answers easily findable.
Similar to the rest of your website, your FAQ page needs to be fully optimized. One of the major mistakes brands make is not thinking about the experiences of those customers that need to scroll down 100-200 questions to find what they’re looking for. This way, a visitor might overlook their question and, frustrated, leave your website immediately.
There are numerous ways to simplify navigation on your FAQ page. For example, you could classify your questions into several categories. Microsoft divides its software download FAQ page into the questions related to Windows and those related to Office. Therefore, if someone wants to find out more about downloading Office, they will know exactly where to go. The questions are expandable and can be opened directly from the page, without any redirections.
Another great example of a user-friendly FAQ page is the one on Buffer’s site. They provide a search box, where customers can enter relevant keywords to find important answers right away.
- Keep answers short.
Your customers don’t want you to write essays. They expect to get short and concise answers. You don’t have to explain everything in detail. Instead, focus on those aspects of an answer that are valuable to your audiences. Optimize your answers for conversational keywords, those that will make your FAQ easier to rank in the SERPs. Also, optimized and concise answers from your FAQ pages also have an opportunity to appear in Google’s snippets.
4. Custom 404 Page
The 404 error page is a status code sent by your server to the searcher. Simply put, this is a message that tells a user that your server still works, but that the page they’re trying to reach doesn’t exist anymore.
Similar to any other 4xx error page, this status code is a searcher-side mistake. For example, they mistyped your URL or clicked on a broken link. Unfortunately, most 404 error pages are generic, displaying a dull message like “404 Page Not Found.” Frustrated by the technical jargon, your visitors will kick your page without trying to fix the error. This is why customizing your 404 page should be high on your website checklist.
For starters, use everyday language to explain the problem. Tell a user that the problem is in the old link or a page that has migrated.
Also, use fun images and design to make your 404 page engaging. For example, Lego has an awesome 404 page. They used their Minifigures to display brand friendliness and boost brand awareness.
Most importantly, try to keep users on your website. Offer a link to your homepage, sitemap, archives page, or a link to your popular website content.
There are many WP plugins that will help you create custom 404 pages. For example, Forty Four plugin lets you replace your default 404 page with a custom one. With 404page plugin, you can choose an existing page from your WP site and use it as a 404 page.
5. Archives Page
WordPress automatically creates category-, data-, and tag-based archives on your website. Therefore, you have the option to display your archives in your site’s sidebar. The only problem with this option that links will soon clutter your sidebar and make it more difficult for your visitors to find relevant content. This is where custom archive pages shine.
This is a page, where you can bring your old content together, display popular blog posts, top categories, tags, etc. For you, that’s an amazing opportunity to improve user experiences and provide them with an efficient way to find your old content efficiently.
Unfortunately, most WP themes don’t offer custom archives page templates, so you will need to create one. WPBeginner has recently published a detailed guide on how to create a Custom Archives page in WP. For starters, you will need to go to your WP admin panel > Pages > New. You can call your page Library, Archives, or however you want. In the Page Attributes section, you just need to set the Archives template and save the page. Next, you can add monthly or yearly archives, add a list of authors, add a tag cloud, etc.
Over to You
When discussing essential pages for a WP site, we usually talk about a blog or product pages. However, without a detailed About page or a custom 404 page, your site will not be complete. Each of the pages I mentioned above serves to engage audiences, increase their experiences with your website, and turn them into loyal and satisfied customers.
Hope this article helps you understand why these pages are crucial for your WP site and how to optimize them properly.