Some people hate landing pages when they arrive at a website: it is a plain distraction. SEO experts love landing pages as a way to gently prod visitors into the sales funnel or part with contact details or post a comment or visit another page or site. SEO services can also gather vital statistics along the way. Landing pages done wrong could also lead to higher bounce rate and visitor churn since such pages invariably have a call to action for which visitors are not ready. If you provide on-page SEO services as part of your digital marketing service then you will find these tips for building perfect landing pages helpful.
Keep in mind landing pages are more for search engine bots
The On page SEO service providers must resolve a conundrum. On the one hand, they want the landing page to be attractive visually and contain interesting text to encourage visitors to click through. On the other hand, the more important task is to align the landing page with search engine bot requirements and bots mainly consider text content comprising of meta tags and keywords among others. Give the bot preferential treatment and pick keywords.
Keywords and keyword research
Start by picking a list of keywords. You can do this using Wordtracker or Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
- Pick a keyword that best connects with the target page of your site, your company and product as well as the intent of the visitor.
- Then pick a few more short and long tail keywords that will go into the landing page and spread them around. Be brief with the content or you will confuse the poor search engine bot.
- Combine on page keywords with link keywords and make link anchor text work alongside page heading. For example, if “caterer” is primary keyword, “Wedding” the second and you have city covering other keywords and heading you could combine all into: “Los Angeles Wedding Caterer”.
Landing page URL
The landing page URL will, of necessity, be different from the page on your site that it targets. Make sure to create a short URL that also includes the all important keyword for which it is created, such as for example “caterer” or “catering service”. You can then proceed to the title and description part to get your landing page to be effective.
The title, meta description and headline
What do spiders, crawlers and bots in search engines look at? They look at the title and the meta description.
- The title tag is important. Work on it. Word it, reword it but keep it within 70 characters to make it easy for the search engine spider. Make sure to include a keyword in the title tag. The impressive, catchy text is for visitors, the keyword for the spider. So, you could have a title like “Your friendly, great, affordable Los Angeles Wedding Caterer” but the keyword is important.
- The title shows up below the URL of your site in search engine results page and then you have the all-important meta description which actually tells the visitor what your website offers. Create a brief but informative description that fits into 150 characters and do not forget the keyword and call to action. The description targets human visitors, not bots.
- The spider bots, however, appreciate headlines. They consider the headline as being connected with the keyword and the page. Always use H1 HTML tag for the headline!
Keywords matching
Visitors arrive at your landing page once they click on a link somewhere. It may be your social media page. It may be a PPC campaign. It may be a display ad through the programmatic channel. It may be a directory listing. The key to landing page success is to use the same set of keywords in all your campaigns so visitors arrive at the same spot.
The Body
Content in landing pages must be brief and should include the chosen set of keywords distributed evenly with a call to action. Keep the text short (two lines may be enough) whereas the call to action text should be eye-striking. It helps to include a brief testimonial. If you use a button make sure it is resizable and fits mobile screens. Oh, and by the way, your entire landing page should be mobile responsive. However, there is no rule that says you should stick to only short text in the body. You could briefly enumerate the features of your product or service to give visitors a good idea of what is on offer. Doing so gives you an opportunity to include short and long-tail keywords which will help with the SEO part. If and when you do wish to create a new landing page, don’t; instead, change the inner text, colour theme and layout. Search engines like landing pages that stay up and alive. Supposedly seniority counts.
Include shareable content or statistics
Landing page rank matters so what you can do to make it rise up is to include a few tidbits of shareable content and include a line or two of interesting statistics. This will get you backlinks. Take it further by designing and putting in place a thank you page on which you put your social media buttons.
It is not a Herculean task to create perfectly SEO optimized landing pages when you follow these tips. Your on-page SEO services will deliver success to your customers.
