landing pages and SEO

 

Before I answer that, I want to talk a bit about landing pages and why you need them.

Unlike a general website, a landing page focuses on one product or service and is targeted towards a specific user.

They have three main aims:

  • Encourage a visitor to click to go to another page
  • Convince a visitor to buy
  • Get permission from the visitor to follow up with them (i.e. registering their details allowing you to phone or email them)

Because of their highly focused nature, they are great tools for your SEO strategy.

Why landing pages are great for SEO

Landing pages are nothing without SEO – after all, what’s the point in aiming to rank for specific keywords through landing pages if you fail to convert visitors into buyers?

Unlike your company website, landing pages focus on specifics and are therefore optimised to the full for a niche area.

Being dedicated to a single keyword, the content also opens up the possibility of capturing long tail searches too related to your primary keyword.

Key elements of a landing page

Rather than writing swathes of information about what you should put on your landing page, I thought this infographic from BowlerHat sums it up perfectly.

optimised landing pages

On the copy front, my top tips are to:

  • Focus on your customer
  • Create a strong, appealing headline
  • Use a subheading to reinforce idea
  • Your introduction needs a hook to draw the reader in (i.e. what’s in it for them: succinctly pose a problem, present a solution, clearly state the benefits)
  • Overcome their objections
  • Use testimonials and social proof to instil trust
  • Call to action
  • Keep your language clear and simple
  • Less is more

Landing page tracking

The beauty of landing pages is that their effectiveness can easily be tracked. Through your analytics, you can see how many visitors they are attracting, for what keywords and the action they’re taking once there.

This will help you refine your content and continuously optimise it for your target audience. And of course, give you an indication of ROI.

Optimising your landing page for SEO

There are only two steps to optimising your landing page for SEO.

The first is selecting the right keywords.

You can use Google’s keyword tool, brainstorm a list in-house and think hard about what terms your customers would use. Don’t forget to add a few geographical modifiers too.

The second step is optimising your content for your keyword strategy.

You need to make sure they appear in:

  • Page titles
  • Headlines and subheadings
  • Text (do not keyword stuff – write naturally)
  • Meta data

Landing pages and ad campaigns go hand in hand

One of the primary uses of landing pages is to enhance your PPC campaigns.

Having your tailored ads drive traffic to a specific landing page will enhance this kind of marketing strategy.

If you just send traffic to your website, your visitors could get confused as to why the site they land on doesn’t tie up with the subject of the advert. Whereas, if you direct them to a landing page that’s specific to the product/service of the advert, it will have more of an impact.

Landing pages are excellent tools for SEO and should be used in conjunction with specific ad campaigns for maximum impact.