Stop Optimising Your Service Pages for Keywords (Do This First Instead)

Why Keyword Optimisation Won’t Save You

Your website’s been live six months. No customers.

You hire an SEO consultant. “Optimize your keywords,” they say.
You spend $2,000 updating meta tags, adding keyword-rich content, tweaking H1s.

Still no customers. And you are left wondering why!
Why? Keywords can’t fix a broken offer structure.

When your service pages list what you do instead of which solution fits which customer situation, no amount of keyword optimization will make people buy. They’ll bounce because they don’t know if you’re right for them.

When businesses make this mistake, service pages list “4×4 Stables,” “5×5 Stables,” “6×6 Stables.” Customers ask: “Which one do I need?” Sales calls waste 20 minutes explaining options. Guerrilla Steel had exactly this problem before we rebuilt their service architecture.

We rebuilt around buyer situations instead. Enquiry quality jumped 47%. Revenue: $500K → $1M. Keywords unchanged.

The difference? Offer structure came first.

Why This Happen And Why Everyone Gets It Backwards

Most regional businesses start with listing their services, and optimising it for Google keywords. Then they hope customers can figure out what they need. When conversions don’t happen, they’re left wondering why.

A stronger approach flips the keyword first entirely. Don’t start with keywords, start with structure. Find your structure by finding your offers.

First, define your offers and service/product pathways – so they match how real buyers make decisions. entry, core, and premium options that reflect different situations. Then, build your website around those pathways. When the structure’s right, keywords start validating naturally, no forced optimisation, no guessing what Google wants.

“Want to save money building yourself?” → DIY Kits
“Need expandable, quality, fast delivery?” → Modular System Kits
“Have unique terrain or special requirements?” → Custom Engineering

With this version, customers self-select before they ever call. Discovery calls shift from exploration to validation, confirming fit, not figuring it out from scratch. Now the customer’s thought process changes completely: That’s exactly my situation. I need the second option. .

The Offer-First Formula for Service Pages That Close Leads Faster

Before You Build the Website, Define the Foundation get back to the basics. Before worrying about layouts or keywords, nail down the three things that actually shape your website structure:

• What you sell: Your core products or services — the offers that drive revenue.
• Where you operate: Your geographic scope — local, regional, or national.
• Who you serve: The customer types or industries you’re built to help.

Once that’s clear, separate those offers into tiers — because not every customer is ready for the same thing:

• Entry: Fast, low-friction, budget-friendly options that build trust and prove capability.
• Core/Flagship: The service most customers need — your main revenue driver.
• Premium: High-value, custom, or complex projects that deliver the biggest margins.

Then map Buyer Pathways — how people actually move through your ecosystem:

• Which service suits which customer situation
• How customers progress from entry → core → premium
• What happens after the sale (retention, referrals, upsells)

Visualizing the Shift: From Catalogue Pages to Pathway Page

Most businesses use only catalogue style service pages like “Web Design Services: we build custom, mobile-responsive websites.” But a pathway-based page flips it; each page speaks to a specific situation and outcome, so visitors instantly know if it’s meant for them.

Your offer architecture supports your entire website structure. It tells you:

• Which pages you need — one per major pathway or conversion point, not a random list of services.
• How pages connect — each one guiding users along the buyer journey, not just linking for SEO.
• What content supports which services — blog posts that answer real pathway questions, not generic keyword topics.

Guerrilla Steel’s Offer First Transformation

Before: Product Catalogue Pages

Listed specs like “4×4 Stables,” “5×5 Stables,” “6×6 Stables.”
Customers felt confused — unsure what suited them — and sales calls turned into long explanations.

After: Buyer Pathway Pages

Rebuilt around real situations: DIY Builders, Busy Property Owners, Complex Projects.
Visitors instantly recognised themselves, pre-qualified before calling — and conversions rose by 35% for One Team QLD!.

See more of our Conversion Design Transformations

How to Apply This to Your Business

Step 0: Read Alex Hormozi’s “$100M Offers”

Understand why offer structure matters: “Make an offer so good people feel stupid saying no.” When your service pathways match customer situations perfectly, buying decisions become obvious.

Get the Audio book version free on Spotify Then check out the Acquisition.com 100m Offers Free Training – There are two specific modules around Offer Creation, but Id highly recommend reading or listening to the audio book AND going through the full course. ‘

Step 1: Map Your Services or Product to Pathway Tiers

Take your catagloge view and map them to the following basic tiers.

Step 2: Match Tiers to Customer Situations

Don’t organize by features. Organize by buyer needs. For a Regional Landscaping Business they might have services like:

• Garden Design
• Irrigation Systems
• Maintenance Plans

Here’s the same Products or Services mapped to different customers needs with different constraints and outcomes.

Step 3: Design Buyer Pathways

Once your offers are defined, map how customers move through your business, not just how they find you. This isn’t about the “buying journey” (awareness, consideration, decision). It’s about the lifetime pathways your customers take as they grow with you.

Each stage connects logically to the next. Your website’s structure should mirror this progression, guiding people from their first interaction to long-term collaboration.

Here’s what that looks like for Brighter Websites 👇

Step 4: Build Site Structure Around Pathways

It’s not that you shouldn’t have a page dedicated to a specific product, like Website Design – when it makes sense. It’s about helping customers quickly identify what they actually need.

If someone lands on your Website Design page, don’t stop at describing features. Show them the three service pathways Launch, Growth, and Scale. Each pathway represents a clear situation, outcome, and starting point. Visitors can instantly see which stage fits their business.

Depending on your market, the structure can flex. Low competition markets, you might show the pathways clearly on your main service page. In competitive markets, add landing pages for each tier outlining what’s included and who it’s for. Its helpful for Paid Ad optimised landing pages and it gives you the best of both worlds: one strong SEO page, supported by pages that help decision making.

Learn how to structure high-converting service pages → knowledge base – service page structure
Or generate yours fast → try the GPT

Step 5: Use Other Content to Support Your Service Pages

Your service page’s job isn’t to rank for every keyword, it’s to convert. Let your supporting content handle the ranking and authority signals. Use other pages to amplify reach and reinforce trust:

• Case studies – show proof behind each service pathway.
• Blog posts – answer related “how” or “why” questions that drive search traffic.
• FAQs – address recurring objections and link back to the service page.
• Category or cluster pages – connect offers logically (e.g. “Web Design” → “SEO Setup” → “Social Media Management”).
• Social posts – share outcomes, not features, to pull readers back into your pathways.

Build outward from your offer your service page converts; your supporting content attracts and qualifies.

Why Structure Beats Keywords Every Time

Traditional SEO logic still assumes the customer knows what they need that every service is equally relevant and that rankings automatically equal conversions.

In reality, especially in regional markets, it’s the opposite.
Customers are unsure which service fits their situation. That uncertainty leads to wasted discovery calls, mismatched enquiries, and high bounce rates even if you’re ranking well.

When you design your website around offer pathways instead of keywords, everything changes:

• Customers self-select into the right pathway.
• Discovery calls become solution validation, not exploration.
• Google better understands your semantic structure.
• Keywords validate naturally — no forced optimization.

Proof in practice: Guerrilla Steel didn’t change a single keyword. They just reorganized their service structure and doubled their revenue.

What Happens When You Skip This Step

Skip offer structure, and everything downstream breaks. You’ll still get traffic, but it won’t convert. Fixing it later means rewriting URLs, reworking links, and losing rankings, all because the foundation wasn’t built for how customers actually buy. Keyword rankings will follow later but your conversions will start from day one.

Start Here Before You Touch Keywords or Design

If you’re rebuilding your website, start with structure. Map your service tiers, define buyer pathways, and build pages around real situations, not features. If your current site isn’t converting, the offer structure’s likely the problem. Customers can’t see which service fits them.