A landing page is created with one thing in mind, converting leads. When you have your marketing strategies set, and the traffic is streaming, you want to see that they take action. Sometimes, you find that you have your paid search ads running, and the pages are optimized to generate natural search, but you can’t see the sales increase. This doesn’t mean that you need to abandon your marketing campaigns. You need to examine what people do once they click on your ads. Probably you don’t have a converting landing page.
How to Make a Landing Page Rank on Search Engines
Having landing pages that are search engine optimized ensures that they appeal to algorithms and this is what determines whether the pages have value among searchers. With Google the major search engine having made countless algorithm updates including Hummingbird, Penguin, and Panda, you should know that any tactic you use to rank your site on SERPs could make or break your marketing campaign or even hit you hard if you are blacklisted.
Creating an SEO landing page requires you to have a custom URL and find out the keywords relevant to your page. Remember that long tail keywords prove easier to rank and often give a higher return on investment (ROI). You want to include the keywords in your landing page in a strategic way. You can have them in the title tag, header tags, meta description, image file names, and in your copy or content.
For example, if it’s a rehab facility based in Monument, Colorado and it’s creating a landing page targeting people struggling with substance abuse and addiction, rather than using broad terms like “rehab” or “rehab center”, they can go for long-tail keywords like “rehab in Monument, Colorado” or something like “alcohol rehab in Monument, Colorado”
Another important thing that can help with ranking a landing page is to secure backlinks to the page. When you get people linking to your page, it helps promote your organic ranking.
Although there are various ways to create groundbreaking content that goes viral and reaches many different audiences all over the internet, one tried, and true method you can use is:
- First, you need to create original content that is well researched and offers value to the reader. You can include case studies, data, and other valuable information but never copy directly from another website.
- Secondly, you need to identify influencers within your industry and reach out to them to see if you can get backlinks. You can also attempt to get bloggers to have links pointing to your site.
Speeding up the landing page will also help in ranking it on SERPs. You can speed up the load time of the page by having smaller image files, switching to a web host that is faster, and shutting off extensions and plugins that the page doesn’t use. Probably, you want to make the content on the page shareable by adding share buttons.
PPC Campaigns for Landing Pages
If you are going to have PPC campaigns for your landing page, you should have a strategy in place. Paid traffic isn’t the same as organic search traffic or referral traffic. Getting organic traffic works better for long-term strategy and helps set up the foundation of trust for your brand. Also, it is cost-efficient because you don’t necessarily have to pay to get the traffic. That being said, PPC campaigns aren’t a bad idea. It is estimated that 45.5 percent of audiences can’t distinguish between an organic search result and a paid ad. In addition, visitors arriving at your page from a paid ad are 50 percent more likely to tap the call to action (CTA) button.
Something to point out here is that while paid ads can give you traffic that has a good conversion rate they can be expensive. If your landing page ranks on the first page of search engine results, you may not want to make PPC campaigns for that page. This is because you already have organic traffic that is visiting your landing page. Having paid ads to lead visitors to your landing pages will only cost you unnecessarily.
Elements of a Landing Page That Converts
You don’t want visitors to just visit your landing page; you want them to become your customers by taking action. A landing page that converts should have the following elements:
- Clear call to action
- Keep it simple
- Offer
- Important attributes
- Tidy visuals
- Effective Headline
- Social proof
The main person you are looking for traffic in your landing page is for them to take a call to action (CTA). You want them to “sign up”, “shop now”, “see our video”, “try our herbal lotion”, or even “contact us”. These are good examples of call to action or what you want your landing page visitors to do. You should ensure that you have the CTA displayed in a visually clear and unique way with an easily visible button to click. You can even use visual clues to direct visitors to the CTA button so that they don’t have to guess where or what to click on.
Making an offer can also help influence visitors to take action. You can give them something like a coupon, a discount, a free version or free trial of a service or product, a matching gift, or a whitepaper. Offers tend to drive visitors further inside the conversion funnel. In fact, you can pair the offer with a deadline so that your visitors are spurred to respond fast.
Having a clear and simple landing page increases the chances of getting people to take action. Studies indicate that when you give people more choices, they tend to take longer to make a decision. On the landing page, you can do away with the navigation bar or simply visually minimize it. You need to also limit content, which cannot move people deeper into the funnel. If there is a form on the page, you need to keep it short.
It’s important you give visitors very strong points or good reasons why they need to take the action you want them to. You need to explain the problem the product or service you are offering is going to solve but in a brief, yet enticing way.
An effective headline for the landing page is going to help visitors to quickly decide whether they should remain or go back. It is unlikely that people will continue to take action if, in the first place, they don’t understand what you do. They won’t even download your app, sign up or read the whitepaper. However, if you have a landing page headline that is clear and explanatory, you can still win the visitors to continue getting down the funnel.
People see greater value in things, which others have approved. Social validation evidence may include press mentions, testimonials, usage statistics, or a list of customers. You have, for example, seen landing pages that try to put a list of big brands or press companies that associate with the business or have mentioned the business.
What to Avoid on a Landing Page
If your landing pages are going to convert, there are things you need to avoid because they will bring down your marketing campaign and you won’t turn the leads to customers. You need to stop beating around the bush and make your marketing message clear. Just tell people what you are solving. If you are doing a PPC landing page, ensure that you match the page headline with the paid ad headline, so people don’t get confused.
You also want to avoid creating distractions because they take the attention of the user way. Distractions also confuse visitors, and they are unable to know, which action they need to take. This contributes to choice fatigue, which can be dangerous to your lead conversion efforts. You can remove the header navigation from the page.
Concisely, a landing page that is highly optimized and created to convert can see you get good results. It will pull visitors further deep the conversion funnel meaning that a bigger number of the audiences who visit your landing page may become your customers.
