You already know how important it is to optimize your website for search engines. But have you been applying the same principles to your landing pages? If not, you could be losing out on valuable traffic and conversions.
Your landing pages can show up in search engine results, just like the regular pages on your site. And optimizing your landing pages isn’t much different than optimizing your homepage or blog posts, although there are a few key differences to keep in mind. Here’s how you can make your landing pages search-engine-friendly so they’ll work harder for your business.
Are Your Landing Pages Worth Optimizing?
Optimizing your landing pages can work very well — but it’s not always worth the effort. It depends on whether your landing page is permanent.
For example, suppose you’re running a short sale. You’re planning to take down the landing page for the sale after it’s over. In this situation, optimizing the page probably isn’t worth your time.
There’s one exception to this rule of thumb. If you run the same sale on a regular basis, such as an annual Black Friday promotion, you should leave your landing page up and optimize it. Pages like this are a good long-term investment, even if you don’t use them all the time.
If you have landing pages that you keep active all the time, you should definitely optimize them. This can make a significant long-term difference in how well the pages perform for you. In fact, you should treat these pages with the same attention to detail that you’d give any other page on your website.
Finding Keywords for Your Landing Pages
Just like regular SEO, SEO for landing pages relies on well-researched and well-placed keywords. You can do keyword research for your landing pages the same way you would do it for any other page.
Start by considering your audience and their needs. Think about what kind of prospective customer you want to find your page. Ask yourself what problem they have and how your business can solve that problem for them.
Keeping your audience in mind, write a list of potential keywords that relate to the product or service you provide. You can use online tools like Google’s keyword planner or Answer the Public to supplement your own ideas. Don’t worry about finding the perfect keywords yet — just brainstorm and capture all your thoughts on paper.
Next, consider how much competition there is for the keywords you came up with. Your best bet is to use long-tail keywords — that is, keywords with lower search volume but a lot of specificity.
Finally, work your keywords naturally into your copy. Don’t forget to include them in your title tag, headers, and meta description as well.
Used correctly, your keywords should enhance your copy. Here is an example of a landing page with well-optimized keywords and text. Be careful not to stuff your page with keywords, or your copy won’t look natural to Google or your readers.
Getting Backlinks for Your Landing Pages
Keywords are only half of the SEO equation. Backlinks are the other major thing you need to think about. It’s harder to get backlinks to landing pages than to other types of page, but even one or two can give you a boost in SERPs.
The best way to get a backlink to your landing page is to ask. Reach out to your connections and see if they’d be willing to help you out with a link. Another tried-and-true way to build backlinks is to guest post on other people’s blogs.
SEO takes a lot of time and effort, but don’t give up. When you start noticing the results, you’ll be happy you climbed up that mountain!