Top 3 Things to Change on Your Homepage to Improve Your SEO
If your website isn’t showing up in search results the way you hoped, your homepage is the first place to look.
Many small business owners assume SEO is complicated, technical, or requires constant upkeep. In reality, a few strategic homepage updates can make a noticeable difference, without hiring an SEO expert or learning a new tool.
Below are three of the fastest and most impactful homepage changes you can make to improve your SEO, help search engines understand your site, and attract the right visitors.
Are there more than three ways? Sure, of course there are. However, these are three common things I see when auditing small business websites, so I always suggest to start with these foundational three, then move on to more.
1. Clarify Your Main Headline (Your H1)
Your home headline, also know as your H1, is one of the most important SEO elements on your site. This is the first thing both visitors and search engines see, and it should clearly answer two questions:
What do you do?
Who do you help?
Many websites use this valuable space by including vague or clever phrases like “Welcome to our Website” or “Designing the Future”. While these might sound nice, they don’t tell Google, Chat GPT, or any other search or AI engine (or your audience for that matter), anything useful. It leaves them guessing - what does this website offer?
Instead, aim for clarity over creativity. A strong homepage headline might look like:
“Reliable Residential Plumbing Services in Buffalo, NY”
This immediately tells the search engines what your site is about and helps the right people know they’re in the right place.
SEO Tip: You only want one H1 per page, and your homepage is the most important place to use it.
2. Add Keyword-Authentic Supporting Text (Not Just Images)
A beautiful homepage is great, but if your site relies mostly on images, sliders, or graphics, Google has very little content to work with.
Search engines can’t “read” images the way humans do. They rely on text to understand what your site is about, including visible on-page copy and image alt text.
To improve your SEO, your homepage should include short, scannable sections of text that naturally mention:
Your services
Who you work with
Your approach or process
Your location (if you serve a specific area)
This doesn’t mean stuffing keywords everywhere. It simply means clearly explaining what you offer in plain language. Try to think how your customers think. If they’re searching for your site, what words would they be using or how would they explain it in their own words?
For example, a short paragraph under your services section could briefly describe how you help clients and the types of services you provide. These small sections give search and generative AI engines important context, and they also help visitors understand your value faster.
You should also make sure that you’re not using images to represent text. If you embed text within the image itself, the search engines can’t read that text. You should be sure you add descriptive alt text to your image. However, remember that images and alt text should support your content, not replace real written copy.
SEO Tip: Write for humans first. If it sounds natural to read, you’re doing it right.
3. Optimize Your Page Title & Meta Description
Your page title and meta description control how your homepage appears in Google search results. This is what people see before they ever click on your website.
A strong SEO title and description should:
Clearly explain what you offer
Include relevant keywords
Encourage someone to click
For example, for a small home services business:
SEO Title:
Residential Plumbing Services in Buffalo, NY | ABC Plumbing
Meta Description:
Professional residential plumbing services in Buffalo, NY, including repairs, installations, and emergency service. Trusted, local, and reliable.
Even if this doesn’t immediately improve your ranking, it can significantly improve your click-through rate, which means more traffic from the same search position.
BONUS Tip: Use the Squarespace SEO/AI Visibility Dashboard
If you use Squarespace, you have access to a built-in SEO/AI visibility panel that can help your site get discovered in both traditional search and AI-powered search results. This dashboard gives you a clear snapshot of which pages are missing key SEO titles and descriptions and it identifies images without alt text. You can review and update these right inside the dashboard instead of hunting through individual page settings.
Squarespace’s AI SEO tools use natural language understanding to help generate metadata, alt text, and optimized descriptions, saving you time and helping your content perform better in both search engines and emerging AI search experiences.
This means your site isn’t just set up for traditional SEO, it’s also more likely to be understood, cited, and recommended by AI-powered search features like Google AI summaries and other generative search tools.
Final Thoughts
SEO doesn’t have to be overwhelming or overly technical.
If you focus on clarity, structure, and helpful content, your homepage can do a lot of the work for you, attracting the right visitors and supporting your business goals.
Start with one change at a time. Once your homepage is clear and optimized, you can build from there.
Your website should work harder for you, not the other way around.
