The landing page of a website is the page that people see when they click on your website, be it through an advertising link or other means. The page is specifically designed to be the first thing that people see and it will typically have a desired call-to-action that the site owner is looking to encourage them to do. These would be things such as subscribing to a mailing list or buying a product, etc…
The landing page is a powerful asset that can be used to any site owners’ advantage in increasing that much-desired converse of leads into customers. When your website or any website uses search engine optimisation (SEO) effectively it can make all the difference in the overall success rate of the landing page which then in turn should ultimately be beneficial for the business as a whole.
Since landing pages are usually at their most effective when there is only one specific desired action asked of the user it makes optimisation slightly more difficult but that does not mean that it is any less important.
There are many SEO techniques that can be used to your advantage, and when they are used effectively and efficiently your landing page will then be able to become this incredibly powerful asset. Also, when a landing page is designed effectively you should also be able to help that specific page rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords.
Keywords
This is search engine optimisation 101, when optimising a landing page, you are going to want to use keywords to your advantage.
When constructing a landing page, you are most likely going to be doing it after the website as a whole is complete. Assuming that you have optimised the site content for your desired keywords when creating the written content for the landing page you are going to want to do the same thing.
The first thing to do is keyword research, use free or paid keyword services to determine what keywords are currently being searched for in your specific niche. However, just ‘throwing’ them into your content isn’t going to make it optimised, you still need to use them correctly. Try and avoid things like ‘keyword stuffing’, where the keywords are overused to the point that they are actually more harmful to your SEO.
When you are trying to use the keywords effectively make sure that you stay on brand, the written content should be consistent with the overall brand you have cultivated or trying to cultivate with your website as a whole. Since they are usually made after it can occur where the landing page is not consistent with the overall style and message that the rest of the business has. If there is no consistency then this can be jarring or off-putting for users which then might harm your conversion rate.
You are also going to want to make sure that the content is both friendly for users as well as search engine friendly. When the keywords are written into the content make sure that they aren’t just put there for the benefit of the search engine but also so that it is readable for the user.
Also, just like with any written content you should always check with a grammar checker to make sure there are no mistakes. It is also recommended that you proofread a couple of times as the checker is most likely only going to check for technical grammar errors and not things like syntax errors.
Tags and Metadata
This is where things start to get slightly more complicated but nothing too difficult when you understand it.
When optimising the content for the search engine there are a few things that you should absolutely do in regards to your tags and metadata, this is because this is the first thing that the search engine will ‘see’ before it crawls through the content on any given page I.e., the landing page.
Title Tag – The title is obviously going to be incredibly important make sure that it isn’t too long; you want to be as accurate and concise as possible which can be a surprisingly difficult balance sometimes. Also, try and put a keyword in there so as to help the search engine understand the page better.
Meta Description – The meta description is what appears below the title on the SERPs describing what the site is about. You are also going to want this to be as concise as possible at around 160 characters, you should use this to try and quickly describe to the users what the site is about in more description than the title so as to entice them to click on your webpage.
Heading Tags – Each heading is ranked within the HTML code of the page by its importance, starting with H1 then H2 and then so on. The number will increase the further down the page you go, starting with the main heading at the top being the H1. Each of these headings should be optimised effectively. They should typically contain a relevant keyword to the paragraph of text that follows it.
Alternative Tags – If you have images on the page, you are also going to want to use an alt tag for them. The images will of course have a name since all files need to have a name but you should also include alt text that briefly describes what the image is, this is so that the search engine fully understands it.
All of this is referred to as the metadata and users see this and don’t see this at the same time. What is meant by this is they are of course going to see what the title, description, and headings are, but they are going to see only what you want them to see. They aren’t going to be in the code like you are so they won’t really be seeing the metadata in full.
Interlinking and Backlinking
This has typically always been the bread and butter when it comes to SEO technique. Linking effectively can be an incredibly useful tool that can make all the difference in your website or page’s overall success.
Interlinking – Everything on a site should be connected to each other so that it is easier for the user to traverse your pages and so that it is easier for the search engine to do so too.
Users should be able to navigate through your site ideally through a customer journey where they can easily do your desired call-to-action such as purchasing a product.
Not only should this be easy for users but when the search engine crawls through your site’s content including the landing page it will have an easier time understanding that everything is related and important to each other.
As previously stated, landing pages are usually made after the site is complete and maybe even up and running for a while so when the landing page is created it is possible to forget to link it to the rest of the site.
Backlinks – These are always a useful asset in any SEO endeavour. Backlinks used to be the main thing that SEO experts focused on; this is not as important as it used to be a decade ago but that does not mean that they are useless now, far from it in fact.
By having links from other reputable sites, you should then hopefully be able to increase your domain authority of any given page, in this instance the landing page. Building backlinks organically and naturally is what the main search engines such as Google are looking for.
You are also going to want to get backlinks into your page from relevant sites too, the more backlinks you get flowing into the landing page that are reputable, relevant, and done organically the better success with that page you should hopefully have.
Useful Tips
These are the main techniques to keep in mind when trying to optimise your landing page, but there are other just as important things to keep in mind.• Consider the page load speed: users in today’s world are so used to getting everything instantly that if they load up your page and it takes longer than roughly three seconds, they are more than likely going to click off the page. • Don’t forget the URL: when you first set up the site you of course will have registered a domain address. Since the landing page will typically be created later on, you need to make sure that you remember to make the URL for the landing page consistent with the rest of your site. • Update regularly: forgetting to update the landing page when necessary is a surprisingly common occurrence with some sites. If any of the information on the landing page becomes irrelevant, out of date, incorrect etc… then you need to make sure and change it so that users are always able to get the most accurate information possible.• Shareability: social media is something that most users will be using on a day-to-day basis, because of this you need to make sure that your site and your landing page are easily shared on social media. This should hopefully then be some easy advertising which then should increase the number of people who see the landing page.
The Importance
The landing page can be a key asset in your tool belt. However, the key to making it as useful as possible is to optimise it effectively as that will make all the difference in the success rate of the page.