Landing pages have two purposes: to convert leads and to drive traffic. Indeed, the ultimate goal of a landing page is to attract potential customers and convert them.
For a landing page to be effective, you must make it SEO-friendly. In this guide, we will look at ways you can improve the SEO of your landing pages to rank on SERPS.
Landing Pages and SEO
A landing page, designed with SEO in mind should rank well in search engine results and drive quality leads and conversions.
Like all SEO, the focus must be on keywords and search intent.
In addition, landing pages must include a call to action (CTA) to encourage signups or further interaction.
Landing pages are often part of a wider marketing campaign to increase the site’s traffic share. They must provide a positive user experience.
Do’s and Don’ts for Landing Pages
- They must be clearly written in positive language.
- No gimmicks.
- They should funnel users towards conversion.
- They must include optimised content.
- They must include quality content.
SEO Strategy for Landing Pages
Defining a clear SEO strategy can help your landing pages to rank higher in SERPS. Ultimately you want to generate more leads by attracting people who may be interested in your product or service.
Generating quality leads will lead to a higher conversion rate.
Here are the key strategies for Landing Page SEO success:
- Keyword Research
- Search Intent
- On page SEO
- Optimised URLs
- Improved technical SEO
- Backlinks
1. Keyword Research – Using Keywords in Landing Pages
The best keywords for landing pages are bottom-of-the-funnel keywords, which usually include long-tail keywords.
Your intent when using a keyword research tool should be – transactional. It is also worth searching the transactional keywords that your competitors are using.
Copywriting Landing Pages Using Keywords
Keywords should be included naturally, as Google can spot keyword stuffing and will not rank the page as highly.
Landing pages should be user-friendly, not simply written to beat the algorithm.
A good copywriter will use secondary keywords to provide context for a landing page.
Don’t forget semantic keywords. They will support the primary keywords but are not designed to rank themselves. They help with search intent.
Using a keyword tool such as SemRush Keyword Magic Tool may help you to find suggestions for secondary and semantic keywords.
2. Search intent for Landing Pages
Search intent is essential for landing pages as you want to deliver the content the user expects. A user who lands on a page and finds it confusing will likely leave, and you will lose a potential conversion.
The easiest way to get this right is to imagine yourself as the user. Experiment with appropriate Google searches to see what appears for the keywords used.
Rather than copy your competition, use the intent to determine the design and layout of your landing page, including headings, content and visuals.
3. On-Page SEO for Landing Pages
On-page SEO allows search engines to crawl and categorise your landing page and rank it in SERPS.
Successful on-page SEO for landing pages involves:
Title Tag – First impressions count, so it needs to be persuasive and include your target keyword.
Meta Description – Use this to convince the user to click through to the landing page and should include the target keyword.
Headings – Use an H1 tag to match your title and include H2, H3 and H4 subheadings to break up the text. Include some secondary keywords in subheadings.
Alt Text – Add alt text to images to describe the picture so it can be crawled and included in SERPS. It also improves accessibility to your landing page.
Internal Links – Remembering that your goal is conversion, include some internal links to send users to relevant pages only.
Visuals – Images and videos help to engage users and keep them on your landing page for longer.
4. Optimised URLs for Landing Pages
Ensure your page URL communicates the content effectively and reflects how the page fits into the structure of your website.
Search engines prefer URLs to be:
- Fewer than 65 characters long with hyphens separating words.
- Lowercase with forward slashes to separate concepts.
- Primary keywords to the left
5. Improved Technical SEO for Landing Pages
Technical SEO, such as page speed and Core Web Vitals, are essential for search engine rankings.
Slow-loading pages will increase your landing page bounce rate and affect your ranking negatively.
Audit your page for loading speeds and adjust problem areas, such as reducing image sizes to improve the results.
6. Backlinks for Landing Pages
Backlinks are links made by other sites to your content.
High-quality backlinks from valued high-ranking websites will boost your landing page SEO.
Try reciprocal linking, where you cite the source of facts you use in your content to increase your chances of those sites backlinking to you.
Sharing your own data or statistics will also increase your chances of gaining backlinks.
If you want some help improving your landing page SEO and ranking on SERPS, why not contact us at SEO and Web? We have a proven track record of getting results for our clients.
