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7 Tricks For Making Landing Pages Work For You And Your SEO Clients

hat makes a landing page work? Why do some landing pages get people to stay, convert, and get shared socially, while others are just given a quick look?

7 Tricks For Making Landing Pages Work For You And Your SEO Clients

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What makes a landing page work? Why do some landing pages get people to stay, convert, and get shared socially, while others are just given a quick look? How do you build a landing page that really works for your brand?

From the SEO standpoint, there are 4 main problems with landing pages:

  • Search. A landing page doesn’t seem to answer the search query. This occurs when SEO’s have one landing page for a particular keyword in mind, while search engines choose to place a different one first.
  • Engagement. The landing page content is not engaging enough.
  • Awareness match. A landing page is not a match to searcher’s intent and level of brand awareness.
  • Conversion patterns. A landing page is not a part of a conversion funnel.

This post will give you 7 actionable tips to help you build landing pages that really work for you and your SEO clients. The tips are split according to the opportunities: Search, Engagement, Awareness match, and Conversion Patterns.

The Search Aspect

1.       Set keywords to landing pages matches

For maximum traffic, conversions, and sound performance (high CTR and Avgerage Time on Page, low Bounce rate, and % Exit), you not only need high rankings in search engines for the right keywords, but you also need to rank the right landing pages.

Start your landing page improvement mission with finding the best landing page match for each of your keywords. For your main keywords it’s likely to be your homepage, but in other cases it could be product pages, click-through, viral, or squeeze pages.

2.       Track if the right landing pages rank

See if your target landing pages show up in Google for your target keywords. Quite often, the page you’re trying to rank – the one that visitors will find useful and relevant to their query – isn’t the page that search engines choose to place first.

You can either run this check manually or with Rank Tracker:

rank tracker

click to enlarge the image

As many of you know, Rank Tracker is integrated with Google Analytics. You’ll also be able to check how much traffic is coming to your target landing page, as well as Bounce Rates.

The Engagement Aspect

3.       Level up the content of your landing pages

How engaging is your landing page’s content? Use metrics like Traffic, Bounce Rate metrics, Average time on Page and % Exit, to determine if your page is engaging. Customers who leave to quickly are not finding the info they are looking for.  Also look at comments, social shares, and feedback from your readers.

Regardless of your current engagement level, you can make content improvements . Start with uncluttering your landing page by sticking to the general rule “one page – one point.” Cut down on ads and content that lacks substance.

Check to see if you have too much content. Even though endless sales copies used to be very popular a while ago and might be still performing well, you should consider a more concise format. Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for.

4.       Go an extra mile with your landing pages’ design and layout

See if your content is well-structured. Your layout should make it easy for your readers to know where they should look to fulfill their search intent. Also add visuals to make it as easy as possible for your site visitors to consume the content. These might be short videos, screenshots with explanatory notes, or pictograms that allow readers to scan content easily. These introductions to landing pages often suggest that you cared to put some effort into your content, which helps build trust with your readers.

As a side note, be cautious of copy and design changes that you make for stable landing pages that seem to convert well, but might seem outdated from the content or design standpoint. Ugly sometimes sells and nobody knows why. In most cases, it’s worth launching a new version of an important landing page as part of A/B split testing to test performance.

The awareness match aspect

5.       Diversify for different level of awareness about your content

Your SEO landing pages should be optimized for the level of your customers’ awareness. In other words, you should provide your readers with different content depending on whether they have never heard of your brand, used it occasionally, or are avid fans.

Your visitor’s search intent might sometimes be clear from the keywords they use, so you’ll be able to diversify by finding the right landing pages for particular keywords. Needless to say, it’s important to consider the awareness level when writing the sales copy and choosing the visuals. You need to make sure content consumers get answers to questions they initially had in mind.

Conversion Patterns

6.       Build funnels

Build funnels and check not only separate pages, but also bundles of them. After the landing page, the user gets to register and visit the page where he inserts his personal data. Check various combinations of landing and registration pages. You may find unexpected results here.

Analysis

7.       Check SEO landing pages metrics

Now that you have all your keywords matched with landing pages in one list, make sure no wrong pages squeeze into search results.

Keep tracking to see how your landing pages engage enough over time. Check Traffic, Bounce Rate, Avg. time on Page and % Exit to make sure your readers see value in your content. The diagram below summarizes the steps you need to take to build great landing pages for your SEO clients:

landing page optimization

Click to enlarge the image 

What are the main issues you are confronted when it comes to landing pages and SEO? Share your ideas in the comments below!

Image credit: Dreamframer via iStockphoto

Category SEO
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VIP CONTRIBUTOR Aleh Barysevich Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Link-Assistant.Com

Aleh Barysevich is Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at companies behind SEO PowerSuite, professional software for full-cycle SEO campaigns, and ...

7 Tricks For Making Landing Pages Work For You And Your SEO Clients

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