You might have heard that promoting a landing page in the Google top search results is impossible, expensive, or hard. That is somewhat true because landing pages have a specific structure. You cannot add several keyword groups on a single page: it will look spammy to the search algorithms, even though the page would have answers to all of the users’ questions.
SEO experts usually target different keyword groups on separate pages. You are probably surprised: “How come? I’ve seen landing pages in the search results”. Yes, sometimes search algorithms let landing pages get in the top-10 for high-volume keywords. However, that is an exception rather than a common thing, and the conversion rate of such a landing page cannot be high.
However, if the niche is not very popular or lacks quality content, you can get your landing page to the top without much effort. It is even easier with proper SEO optimization, as you do not need to spray and pray.
Let’s see how to improve SEO on landing pages.
Decide what keywords you want your landing page to rank. To get new organic traffic to your page, consider long tail keywords, as they are less competitive.
Get your keywords among the first 100-150 words on your page. You do not have to use only exact keywords: include variations, synonyms, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. Add your key phrases to the page URL.
When the user lands on your page for the first time, they need to understand what it is about quickly.
You text should not look like a single text block above the footer: instead, spread it all over the page. Make sure your page can compete with other landing pages in the search results in the number of selected keywords and quality and quantity of information. Strive for making your page better than the others make it.
If your 10,000-symbol page looks cluttered, separate your copy into paragraphs with <div>TEXT</div>. It will visually reduce the text volume. The content is still there, but to see it, the user will need to take some action. You can see the example of such paragraphs on the «Why you will achieve the result» block on the main page.
Your page should also have images, diagrams, infographics, video — everything that can make your content look more appealing to the users and increase the time spent on the page.
Here is a checklist of technical things you wil need to optimize:
External site optimization is another big topic for discussion, but to cut it short, you need to provide a constant growth of the link mass and other important factors: social signals, share and like buttons, reviews.
Optimize your link snippet by using its features fully. Launch a PPC campaign to let search engines record the user behavior.
Build outbound links to other relevant external pages. That will help search engines to understand the topic of your landing page. If your page is linked to credible websites, that is a signal to Google that it might have quality content. So gather all of the links to authority websites on your page and make sure they are active.
To create a local SEO landing page, you will need to provide the following info:
Your landing page should convert well to be profitable. To maximize conversions, you will tweak and adjust its content or build new pages. When you do so, you can lose what you have earned with search engines, but there is a way out.
Whenever you build a new landing page, set up the 301 redirections — that “explains” where your SEO value is to the search engines, keeping your links and rankings in place.
The 301 redirection is added to the “.htaccess” file or in a CMS.
You have probably visited websites with pop-ups, banners, and video ads that are closed after 15-30 seconds, followed by cookies notification that takes half of the screen. It’s highly likely that the user will leave such a page. To keep the visitor, do not go too far with promotional widgets. Sometimes you can do well without them at all.
Your landing page should be relevant to the main query that brought the visitor to your site. The less relevant your page is, the more likely the user is to leave. Every user that left your website increases bounce rate in Google Analytics. The best way to improve behavioral factors is to predict and meet the expectations of your visitors. Create a convenient and appealing design for your landing page. Improve the UX and add related videos to keep the user engaged.
Register at Google Analytics to track your user behavior. Learn how to interpret the data to improve your landing page. For example, if most users land on your page from mobile devices, focus on making it mobile-friendly. That will speed up your promotion and help to reach more people.
This checklist will help you to make sure you are not missing any important steps of your landing page promotion in the SERP.
The statement “one page, less work” does not work for landing pages. Creating and promoting them is hardly any easier than promoting a regular website. The one-page design creates the illusion of simplicity, but you still have to perform the whole spectrum of SEO works to get to the TOP. Otherwise, your landing page will not get to the organic search results and the only way to promote it would be paid ads.
It might take a lot of work: while regular websites have a lot of content to index, a landing page with limited content has to be perfect on the technical side. You can always order landing page SEO promotion from the experts that will examine your site and prepare it for growth.
