Landing pages are more than a collection of eye-catching graphics and copy — they’re a vital tool for boosting your search visibility, organic traffic, and conversions. Do your landing pages suffer from lackluster organic traffic or low conversion rates? Read on to learn what makes for a great landing page, and then follow our landing page SEO tips to get your offer in front of your target audience and encourage them to convert.
What Makes a Great Landing Page?
At the most elemental level, landing pages should feature compelling copy, relevant images, and a clear call to action.
But those basic elements need to do some very heavy lifting — they need to convert. Whether you want to inspire visitors to make a purchase, sign up for a demo, subscribe to your newsletter, or download your ebook, your landing page needs to demonstrate authority and build trust to encourage visitors to take action.
Often, companies design their landing pages specifically for paid search and ignore the benefits of optimizing for organic search at the same time. The fact is, if you’re focusing on PPC vs. SEO, you’re missing the point. Maximizing landing page performance for both paid and organic search increases the number of people who will see your offer, giving you the best possible opportunity to convert more visitors.
What Is an SEO Landing Page?
An SEO landing page is a web page optimized to attract visitors and drive conversions. It ranks well in SERPs, compels visitors to learn more about your offerings, and is designed to drive a specific result. Ultimately, an SEO landing page delivers a tailored message that supports a single goal. It needs to inform, inspire, and encourage action.
SEO landing pages can take a variety of forms. Some SEO landing page examples include:
- Service pages: Describe your product or service and describe its features and benefits. Focus on what differentiates it from the competition.
- Special offer pages: Promote time-sensitive or conditional deals. Using a distinct landing page for these special offers allows you to add or remove them without affecting other site content. These pages can also be used for PPC ads.
- Bonus content pages: Tempt visitors with valuable assets like ebooks, webinars, and more.
- Newsletter signup pages: Support your email marketing strategy by enticing your audience to sign up for your newsletter.
- Product demo signup pages: If you promote a free demo, make sure it has a unique landing page so you can test your messaging and measure audience response to your offer.
SEO Landing Page Best Practices: Top 7 Tips
Ready to improve your landing page performance? Implement the following tips to drive additional organic traffic to your site and increase your conversion rate.
1. Invest in Keyword Research
This is the backbone of good landing page SEO. To create truly effective landing pages, you need a relevant keyword that has the right search intent. In other words, align your keyword to address your prospects’ needs at a specific point in the customer journey. For example, choose a keyword with an informational intent if you hope to attract top-of-the-funnel leads. If you want to bring in ready-to-buy visitors, you’ll want to choose a keyword that targets a transactional intent. Keep intent top of mind while you research target keywords and write content.
2. Fine Tune Your Copy
Landing pages aren’t blog posts. Rather than taking a deep dive into a story or a concept, a great landing page should drive conversions while signaling to search engines that the content is relevant to searchers’ intent.
Your landing pages should illustrate the benefits of completing your desired action. For example, if you’re offering a free demo of your CRM, you can highlight how your CRM has helped cut customer churn by 25%.
3. Make Your Offer Obvious with Clear CTAs
Even if your SEO landing page features multiple CTAs, they should all support a single, crystal-clear offer. For example, if you want a visitor to book a consultation with you, place a CTA above the fold and then another one at the bottom of the page for undecided readers. Don’t just assume visitors will know that you want them to give you their email or fill out a form — have a compelling call to action that makes it obvious.
4. Focus on Clean Design
Design is a crucial component of a landing page. Everything should be focused on orienting readers to your offer. A great SEO-optimized landing page keeps your audience focused on one thing — completing a conversion. Think twice before adding links that take visitors off the page. Make sure any images you include add value and support your offer. Your landing page should be easy to navigate, uncluttered, and laser-focused on your CTA. Put a conversion opportunity above the fold!
5. Follow SEO Best Practices
Because you want your landing page to draw organic traffic, you’ll need to implement on-page SEO best practices.
These include:
- Write an optimized page title that includes your desired keyword
- Use h1 and other header tags properly
- Natural inclusion of primary and secondary keywords
- All images should contain alt text
- Include a meta description on your page
- Add a keyword to your landing page URL
- If the landing page is a product page, use product schema to provide search engines with more information (and searchers with a better user experience)
- Make sure your SEO landing page is mobile-responsive
6. Create an Internal Linking Strategy
You need both search engines and potential customers to easily find your landing page. While following SEO best practices will increase the likelihood that your page will rank well, you’ll also want to consider how your new landing page can be integrated into your internal link strategy.
For example, if your landing page is a signup for a free demo, you’d want to link to it from blog posts that refer to your product. The more you link to your landing page from other relevant pages, the clearer the message you send to Google that it contains valuable content.
Use exact match anchor text to send a strong signal to Google about the topic of your page. Anchor text can be considered “exact match” if it contains a keyword that directly aligns with the intent of the page. So if your landing page uses the keyword “CRM demo,” that’s the anchor text you’d want to use.
When you add your landing page to your internal linking strategy, you make it easier for Googlebot to access while you provide context for how it relates to your other web pages. Failing to link to your landing page will make it harder for Google to find.
7. Establish a Link Building Strategy
Backlinks are a powerful way to boost your ranking and build authority. However, the number of backlinks you’ll need for your page to rank will depend on your keyword. Plus, this is one arena in which quality really counts: Backlinks from high-ranking, respected websites boost your landing page SEO more than spammy ones do.
Tracking Your SEO Landing Page Conversions
Google Analytics is a free, powerful tool to assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. GA provides a lot of data. To get the most from it, focus on the KPIs that align with your SEO goals.
To track your SEO landing page conversions, you can create a specific Google Analytics event to track your efforts.
Troubleshooting Your Landing Page SEO
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a landing page underperforms. If you’re experiencing low traffic or conversions, check the following culprits. If possible, do some A/B testing to see what changes have the greatest impact on your conversions.
Verify the search intent of your keyword.
If you’re in doubt about the search intent behind specific keywords, there’s an easy way to check: Google it. Because Google’s algorithm is laser-focused on search intent, the search results for your target keyword provide real-time insights into how relevant it is. If your search doesn’t deliver the types of results you expected, you may need to identify a new keyword.
Check your backlinks.
Do you have a sufficient number of referring domains and backlinks? You can use Google Analytics to see exactly where your website visitors are coming from (and how they’re interacting with your site once they arrive). If you don’t see many visitors coming from other domains, you may need to reassess your link-building strategy.
If you want to check what sites are linking to yours, visit the Links report in Google Search Console.
If you don’t see any backlinks to your landing page, revisit your link-building strategy or speak with a link-building service. Not only do backlinks help drive traffic, but Google also uses them as a ranking factor. Improving your backlink profile can help you increase both your referral traffic and your organic traffic.
Check your internal links.
Are you effectively linking to your landing page? Are the links easy to find? If you don’t see click-throughs from your internal links, you may need to reassess your CTAs. Consider using an image CTA or moving them higher on the page to draw more attention to them.
Workshop your copy.
Is your copy compelling? Are you clearly showcasing the benefits of your offer? Get a fresh set of eyes on your text. If you can grab a colleague to give your copy an unbiased read, you’ll often find room for improvement you wouldn’t have detected on your own.
Take a critical look at your design.
Take a moment to visit the page from multiple platforms, such as mobile and tablet. Is the layout clean or cluttered? What draws your attention first? Make sure it’s easy to read and navigate.
Evaluate your CTA.
Again, an extra set of eyes can be a lifesaver here. Is your offer clear and compelling? Is it action-oriented? If not, it’s back to the drawing board. Be patient: Writing shorter copy is harder than writing long-form pieces. Keep honing it until your CTA is as compelling as possible.
Excel at On-Page Optimization
Create landing pages that demand attention. Combining search engine optimization with quality web design and killer copy can increase conversions and boost your search engine rankings.
Need help with your SEO landing pages? Learn more about our on-page SEO services and our SEO content writing services, then schedule a free SEO consultation.
