There are too many landing pages that look beautiful, and ready to convert visitors into leads and customers. They have powerful calls-to-action, grabbing headlines, engaging media, persuasive copy, and irresistible images. Sadly, none of these things matter if you’re not sending traffic to your landing pages.
You could even hire the best copywriter to craft the most engaging and jaw-dropping copy, and your landing page still would fail — no conversions whatsoever.
Your landing page needs targeted traffic. Period!
You have to start with an SEO-optimized landing page, and then send the right traffic to visit your page.
What are SEO landing pages?
Just like a typical blog page, which is optimized for search engines, an SEO landing page has the same focus. It has elements that naturally pushes it to the top of search engines, appeals to the latest algorithms update.
Aside from being optimized for search engines, the page must be relevant and helpful to searchers as well. After all, at the end of the day, it’s the searchers that have credit cards to pay or sign up for a newsletter.
Although, most landing pages are built to capture email address; hence they are short — but that doesn’t stop you from optimizing it. Here are a few proven ways to optimize your landing pages for conversions and search rankings:
i). Connect with intent: This has everything to do with the headline. Even though you may not optimize the page for a specific keyword, you still have to pay attention to the intent. After a searcher clicks on your search result, will they immediately nod their heads after reading your headline?
Here’s a landing page from GetResponse that appeals to user’s “intent” — satisfying their hunger for a marketing automation software.
ii). Optimize the images on the page: Image optimization should be a top priority for you because Google has a dedicated search algorithm and index for images (i.e., images.google.com).
Make sure you optimize your image title and Alt Text with the target keywords that your landing page is optimized for. Better yet, to avoid over-optimization, use LSI keywords in these two areas. For example:
In the image title use:
- Best workout shoes
While in the Alt Text use:
- Sneakers for working out
iii). Publish to a custom URL: If you use any of the landing page creators in the marketplace, you will be given the option to either publish directly to your WordPress content marketing system or host it on the service provider’s domain.
First, if you want to have control of your landing page, always publish on your own subdomain. That means you should publish your own custom domain (www.yourwebsite.com/yourlandingpage).
Instapage and other landing page tools allow this feature. Bear in mind that publishing your landing page on a custom domain will improve your organic search performance. It’s equally better for users to remember since it’s easy to memorize the custom URL.
Ideally, make sure you include your target keyword in the custom URL when naming your landing page.
iv). Build trusted links to the page: Links are the fuel that powers search engines when it comes to ranking web pages. Many website owners don’t build quality links to their landing pages which is why they struggle to rank high in the top listings.
As you build links to your posts, services page, and your resourceful content, remember to send links to your landing pages too. More on link building strategies later. Keep reading…
v). Retain your seasonal landing page: If you have been doing SEO for a while, you know that driving organic traffic to a website or page doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of time. It can be rewarding when the traffic starts rolling in. But until then, it’s always disappointing.
For most businesses, a landing page is only necessary during the holiday season when they run a short-term campaign. It could be for Black Friday, Cyber Monday or even Christmas.
So what happens to the landing page when the shopping season is over? Do you abandon the landing page (with all the links, traffic, and engagement) and go back to your normal way of doing business?
Don’t make that mistake. Starting a fresh landing page is almost like wiping the SEO slate clean, setting a new goal, and starting from zero. Retaining your landing page even after the season is critical to your continued visibility online, especially in the search engines.
That’s exactly what Curry’s, an electrical retailer in the U.K. did. It improved its Black Friday landing page strategy, and have kept the same page online all year-round, since 2014.
If you visit the landing page now, you might not identify the transformation that has taken place. Study the page very well and you will notice that “Black Friday” is mentioned several times in the copy, and the URL is optimized for that term as well. They have since redesigned the page as well — but the objective has remained the same.
Advanced Keyword Research
Advanced Link Building