Regardless of how much time and money you invest in your copywriting to create incredibly unique website content, there will never be any guarantee that even the best material translates to conversions. When it comes to landing pages, you are going to have to make sure that they qualify as being search engine optimization (SEO) friendly.
Accomplishing conversion goals usually means that people will have to really target their desired traffic. Finding the right kind of traffic for a website can be incredibly difficult.
Landing pages do not serve much good when they are not getting any visitors. Many companies that are already paying for copywriting services cannot afford to invest in other methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or social media advertising.
The great news for companies of all sizes is that SEO-friendly landing pages can make a world of difference when it comes to attracting organic (meaning unpaid) visitors to your website. When you invest in creating SEO-friendly landing pages, you can show up in more searches and get your website, countless new visitors.
How Does SEO Work?
The bottom line to all SEO efforts is structuring all elements of a website to ensure that the website is more likely to appear in search engine result pages (SERPs). When you type certain terms into Google, the SERP you are presented with will include a swath of both paid and unpaid search results.
The top results are likely to include an “Ad” note indicating the results are paid search results while all others are organic. The idea with SEO is to try and appear in the top organic results since many people tend to avoid paid search results.
Google’s top priority is showing searchers what the website thinks are the best results most closely matching what they are looking for when they type a query into the search bar. It can be challenging for a company to land on the first page.
It can take significant time in some cases to end up on the first page, but people can get there with repeated efforts.
How landing pages help SEO
The idea of a landing page is that the page is supposed to be optimized specifically for search engines. A landing page will have elements that are designed to appeal to search engine algorithms and make the page more likely to appear in first-page search results.
Some people will assume there is no need to optimize landing pages when marketing campaigns appear to be for a very short time. Even when this is true, a landing page can still have some value after a campaign ends.
Even though many marketing campaigns might have short-term goals, companies should not overlook their long-term ones as well. When a campaign is likely to be resurrected during the year, then the landing page can still be valuable.
This means that every single landing page a company creates should focus on trying to appeal to Google’s algorithm. A landing page can still attract visitors even after a campaign has ended.
The Constant Google Algorithm Changes
Google is well-known for having developed and unleashed several different algorithm updates. These updates have gone by such names as Florida, Big Daddy, Jagger, Vince, Caffeine, Panda, Venice Update, Penguin, Exact Match Domain (EMD), Payday, Hummingbird, Pigeon, Mobilegeddon, RankBrain, and Fred.
Google has long kept most of its algorithm elements secret. Algorithm updates often have the potential to cause numerous headaches for marketers because some changes Google makes can wipe out entire months worth of work.
Many people used to use so-called “black hat” techniques to try and game Google rankings, but such techniques now lead to major penalties. This means companies should always avoid keyword stuffing, link farming, and sneaky redirects.
When people engage in tactics that Google frowns upon, it can have disastrous long-term effects for a website. All of this makes it incredibly important for all people working on websites to ensure that they are following the best practices.
Creating an SEO landing page
There will essentially be eight steps to helping you create your SEO-friendly landing page.
1. Publish to custom URLs
Creating a page using a content management system often gives people the option to publish to subdomains of service providers so people building pages on Instapage can publish their pages to their custom domain or keep the “.pagedemo.com” on the end of a URL and let it host it for them temporarily.
Letting another party handle hosting can be easier, but is not beneficial for SEO purposes since search engines want to see a domain in a URL. A company will risk confusing prospects by muddling brand consistency and can also miss out on valuable search engine authority a website has built up.
Publishing a landing page to a person’s own domain will get the added advantage of a small rankings to boost if people search for a page’s keywords.
2. Determine keywords
There is never getting around the need to do keyword research. You always want to know what terms your website is ranking for with search engines.
Companies often invest major resources in keyword research because it is so beneficial to so many SEO concerns. It is important to create a list of all the terms relevant to a page and try to figure out what combinations of those terms a person might type into Google.
This means that a doctor who is based in New York City and is creating a landing page targeted to clients who are workplace injury victims will not try to rank for the broad terms like “doctor” or “work injury.” Instead, a long-tailed keyword could be “New York City workplace injury doctor.”
3. Strategically place keywords on a landing page
After you know what your keywords will be, it will be a matter of including them where it will be most advantageous. Some of the best places you must include keywords will be:
Title tag: The title of your page is a logical place to include keywords. This is usually the big blue text spelled out on SERPs, and you want your title to be compelling enough to encourage people to click through.
Meta description: The meta is the short description of the page underneath the title in SERPs. The description should be brief and include your keyword.
Header tags: When it comes to HTML, title tags are arranged in a hierarchy from Header 1 (H1) all the way to possibly H6 (although many pages only go to H3). A webpage should have only one H1 tag which is the main headline. Any subheadings under the H1 will be H2s and subheadings under H2s are H3s.
Image file names: You can modify your image names and should give them descriptive file names that include your keyword. An image title containing keywords improves rankings.
Your copy: Keywords should definitely be sprinkled throughout web copy, but not too much. Again, overuse of keywords constitutes keyword stuffing, which can result in penalties from Google.
4. Page Length Does Not Matter
There is considerable debate about the necessary length of landing pages because some people believe these pages should always be brief and concise while others think there should be as much information included as possible. The truth is that word count alone rarely impacts SEO.
All of that said, longer content does seem to do better than shorter content. So it is always advisable that you make a landing page as full and complete as possible.
When you have concerns about overwhelming your prospects with information, then know that collapsible divs are bits of code that, when included in the back end of a landing page, allow people to hide content under a headline that the user can open and collapse at will. Using these tools can help present a lot of information without being too much.
5. Secure Your Backlinks
There is an unfortunate truth about backlinks in that people need to get backlinks for SEO purposes. This is because backlinks are essentially ways of other websites to vouch for your validity, so acquiring meaningful backlinks is incredibly beneficial.
So how exactly does one acquire backlinks? Your first best bet is simply to create original content you know others will want to share because other parties will be more likely to share material that is interesting and relevant to their audience.
You can also begin seeking influencers within your own industry who may want to help you. Ask friends, family members, and other parties for possible backlinks.
There may be other ways to still acquire backlinks, and companies need to invest time in seeking these opportunities.
6. Leave Seasonal Landing Pages Online
Keeping in mind what was mentioned earlier about people not differentiating long-term campaigns from short-term ones, seasonal landing pages can still be boons for traffic long after seasons end. When you create a new landing page, you are resetting and start over again from zero.
For example, consider one company in the United Kingdom that saw the benefit of making its landing page related to Black Friday. The company has maintained the Black Friday landing page since 2014 now, even though the event only comes once a year.
7. Need for Speed
According to Kissmetrics, 47 percent of website visitors expect pages to load in less than two seconds and 40 percent will abandon pages after three seconds. Considering these sentiments, it is no surprise that Google now makes page speed one of its SEO ranking factors.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a good website to use to know how your website is holding up. You may be able to speed up your page load time by using smaller image files that don’t compromise quality, switching to a faster web host, or shutting off all plugins or extensions your page is not using.
8. Make Content Shareable
Many different social indicators such as reblogs, retweets, Facebook shares, and “+1s” were believed to directly affect a webpage’s SEO, but Google has said it does not. Even though Google says social indicators do not influence SEO does not mean you should ignore social media.
Getting people to share high-quality content is always a great way to increase your reach.
Finding Landing Page Assistance in Houston, TX | SERP Matrix
If you need help designing a landing page in the Houston area or anywhere else in the United States. SERP Matrix is here to help. In addition to landing page work, we also handle content writing, web design and development, and search engine submission.
Our team has a wealth of experience handling landing pages and knows how to get real results. You can call (713) 287-1134 or contact us online to set up a free consultation.
