Strategy overview
The 3 types of pages every website needs and what each one does
Not all pages serve the same purpose. Building a website without mapping out what each page is supposed to do leads to confused users, diluted SEO, and a site that doesn't convert.
Every website needs three types of pages, each with a distinct role for the user and for search engines. Get the structure right first — the content and SEO follow naturally from there.
How to do it?
The three page types and their roles
1. The homepage — your brand universe
The homepage is an introduction, not a sales pitch. It tells visitors who you are, what you do, and whether they're in the right place. It doesn't try to do everything. Its job is to make the right people want to go deeper, and to signal to Google what the site is fundamentally about.
For SEO, the homepage targets your broadest, most competitive keyword. It's the page that carries the most authority on the site.
2. The overview page — the navigation layer
Overview pages sit between the homepage and the detail pages. Their job is to redirect users to the right content based on what they're looking for. They're not meant to be read top to bottom — they're meant to be scanned and clicked through.
For SEO, overview pages target category-level keywords. On checklist-seo.com, pages like /webflow/strategy or /webflow/implementation are overview pages — they organize the content and pass authority down to the detail pages they link to.
3. The detail page — the content layer
Detail pages are where the real work happens. Each one answers a specific question, covers a specific task, or targets a specific long-tail keyword. This is where users take action and where Google finds the depth that signals topical authority.
For SEO, detail pages target long-tail keywords. They should link back up to their overview page, and cross-link to related detail pages within the same topic.
How to map your pages before you build
- Start with your business goal and your one primary audience
- Define your homepage — what's the first thing they should understand when they land?
- Define your overview pages — what are the main topics or sections users need to navigate to?
- Define your detail pages — what specific questions or tasks does each section need to cover?
- For each page, write one sentence: "This page exists to [do X] for [audience]." If you can't write that sentence, the page doesn't have a clear role yet.
Do's
- ✅ Map your page types before writing a word of content — structure shapes everything that comes after it.
- ✅ Give each page one job. A homepage that also tries to convert, sell, and explain everything at once does none of those things well.
- ✅ Make sure every detail page links back to its overview page — this is what builds topical clusters that Google can follow.
- ✅ Use your overview pages to control the user journey — they should make it obvious where to go next.
Don'ts
- ❌ Don't skip the overview layer. Jumping straight from a homepage to dozens of detail pages with no navigation structure confuses users and fragments your SEO.
- ❌ Don't let detail pages become orphans. Every detail page should be linked from at least one overview page.
- ❌ Don't try to target the same keyword across multiple page types. Each type has its own keyword tier: broad for homepage, category for overview, long-tail for detail.
- ❌ Don't build pages without a defined role. If you can't say what a page is for in one sentence, it's not ready to be built.
Tools
