SEO Landing Pages: Getting Started in Growing Your Website Traffic

A way for customers to discover your business online, and the mechanics to earn you sales and leads. 

“What is this perfect scenario you describe!?” I hear you cry. 

That perfect scenario is a well-built and fully optimised website landing page. 

With best practice search engine optimisation sitting behind it, and quality content at the front and centre for all to see.

If you’re not seeing your website analytics on the up, and you’re not getting any sales or enquiries, then you need to add this to your to-do list: Create SEO Landing Pages. 

If not you, then get your Marketing Manager onto that right away.

Here’s what you, or your marketing team, need to know about SEO landing pages. 

What is an SEO landing page?

SEO landing pages are website pages that are designed to show up first in search engine results (E.g., Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo) and persuades your visitor to take a specific action.

Imagine knowing what your customers are searching for online and then imagine yourself creating content that ranks for your customer’s search. 

Not only does your customer then land on your website, but your content they read solves a dilemma for them and makes their life easier. And taking the desired action on your page becomes a no-brainer for them, so they do!

You don’t need to just imagine all of this. This is exactly what an SEO landing page can achieve for you!

What does an SEO landing page usually have on it?

They’re made to be helpful to the reader in terms of its content and the design, so you can expect a really easy page to read, browse, and then to take the desired action. 

What users are urged to do can vary, but the action is usually one of the following:

• Buy a product
• Start a free trial 
• Download a software demo
• Call for a quote
• Subscribe a newsletter 

There’s more that goes into it than just optimising the page to rank and then converting your visitor through a call to action – it’s all about creating an enjoyable experience for the visitor. 

That comes down the content you create and how the page is laid out. Or as we call it, the UX design.

Why bother creating SEO landing pages

You now with either no SEO pages or a low performing one: no extra visitors or conversions.

Future you: More people coming to your website. And as long as the content is good, you could see enquiries and sales boom!

High ranking pages don’t just receive clicks – they receive ten times the amount of clicks as a site in position 8 or lower. 

That means if you’re first, you’re going to get nearly 30% of all clicks. If you’re ranked second or third, you’ll get a share of just over half of all clicks.

Lower and you’re scraping the barrel.  

An SEO landing page could be the difference between polling mid page and being in the top three results. 

But what does it take to write landing page content that converts? 

SEO landing pages: doing it right

It’s not just about being top. If the content or visitor’s experience is poor once they land on your page, they’ll just leave again, either fast or without completing the action you want them to take.

For now though, let’s focus on what you need to create a ‘good’ SEO landing page.

Find the right keywords, queries and search phrases to rank for

Researching the keywords relevant to your business is key to SEO success. Without the use of the right keywords, your target audience isn’t going to be able to find your website at all. 

Find what they’re searching for, then make your page appear. That’s the goal.

For an SEO landing page, you typically want to focus on transactional keywords. Those end of the funnel searches users make when they know what they want and a ready to buy. 

Choosing those keywords to rank for means you know their intent with that search and why they’ve landed on your SEO landing page.

People are ‘landing’ here already on their way to buy. They know what they want, they just need to be sold to.

Be sure to use your chosen keywords casually, naturally, and in places where they make sense. You’re writing for a human on the other side of the screen, even when you’re trying to catch Google’s attention as well. 

Have a good mix of primary and secondary keywords ready to go. You’re going to want a main keyword to bounce your content off and then further keywords and phrases that fit around it. 

All of them need to be relevant and connect to each other. But most importantly, the content itself must talk directly to your visitor. 

To create effective content with SEO in mind, check out our blog on SEO Content Writing.

Write quality and relevant content for your visitors

Like we said above, ranking top isn’t the only goal here. It’s the initial goal, but once you’re there, you need to make the most of it. 

You’re not optimising a landing page just for the algorithm. You’re writing it to provide high quality information for your target audience. 

You need to create content that your visitor reads and feels like they’re the only person you are writing to. 

Make it personal to them or their situation. Make them feel they’re the only person in the room and they have your full attention.

It sounds like a love story, but it’s true for all effective content! 

Do this and you’ll increase how effective your landing page is at converting your site visitors.

Understand a visitor’s search intent

It’s all about understanding why someone is searching the keywords you’re ranking for. 

When they tap something into Google, your landing page needs to empathise with the reason they’re searching for it. 

Think of the page itself like a customer assistant, who greets a new visitor and points them directly towards what they’re looking for. 

What does your landing page need to say to assure a visitor they’re in the right place?

Utilise on-page SEO

On-page SEO matters a lot when writing a landing page. Why? Because it’s the method in which Google will read and index your site. 

This is an underrated method for getting your landing pages to rank highly on search results pages. As our founder Tom Blake said in a recent Featured article:

‘… as your content gets indexed by Google and ranking higher, you can spend less on Google Ads. You can move this spend elsewhere in your marketing. You may even be wise to move your saved paid spend into your content creation to further scale your content and SEO.’

On-page SEO can prevent your business from spending a lot and generating no return. 

Here on out, focusing on customer journey should be the priority, but never forget the medium through which they’ll find your website. 

The basics to in-page SEO: 

• Title tags: The title tag is the link to your page on Google. It’s the most attention grabbing thing you can write before someone has even clicked through. Use around 50 characters and include your prime keyword for best ranking results.  

 

• Meta description: Although not a ranking factor, the meta description is the summary of a page that appears in search results. The copy will help people click your website over others, so make it enticing! 

 

• Headings: Headings range from level 1 to level 6. These headers are incorporated into HTML and form part of your SEO. They should include relevant keywords and offer plenty of information around a user’s initial search term. Read more about headings here.

 

• Internal links: Linking to other pages on your website is one of the best ways to guide a user through the rest of your content. Not only does this offer more value to them, but it helps those site crawlers from the search engines to crawl and index (rank) more pages on your website.Internal links help a search engine to recognise your bank of content. If you add new pages in future, such as other SEO landing pages, these internal links will ensure a search engine can index them. Combine this with backlinking and your page authority will grow as well.

 

• Alt text: If you have images present on your landing page, a search engine won’t be able to read them. That’s why alt text exists. This is where you describe what’s in the image to optimise them for SEO. Use both primary and secondary keywords when describing the images to supplement the content around it. 

Don’t forget the URL

Like your title, the URL tells both a visitor and a search engine what your landing page is about. 

A good URL will reflect the SEO structure of the website and make it much easier for the page to be sorted into a relevant place. 

Be specific. Both people and bots should be able to tell exactly where they are on your website from a glance. 

URLs should be short but still readable. Although it’s not a succinct sentence, you can still tell what the page is going to be about. 

The design needs to be user friendly

Think about the way someone’s eyes are going to flow over the page. What are they going to look at first when your page loads?

Most people start in the top left, as we’re taught to read from left to right. However, a lot of landing pages present information centrally. This is good for SEO as it puts all of the most important information front and centre where there isn’t any ‘noise’ to drown it out. 

Use this design principle in crafting a well optimised landing page. The most important information should be at the top and then pull someone down towards the strong call to action you’re using. 

But your work isn’t over yet! What to do when the landing page goes live

A landing page acting alone, without any support from the website it’s published on, is going to be less effective than its potential. 

Once it’s live, link to it from other relevant pages. 

This gives your visitors somewhere to go if they want to learn more about a product or service. It also allows a search engine to recognise your entire website as a good place for those searching relevant keywords to be. 

You should also share your landing page on social media. Doing so brings in attention from a source where an engaged audience already collects. 

Test, test, and test again!

An SEO landing page doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As user search behaviour and intent changes, your solution to their problem should present differently too. 

Watch how the page performs and change the design according to traffic volume and your current conversion rate. 

Could changing the focus image bring in more clicks? Is the current call to action as effective as last month’s? Routine testing will help you find that sweet spot. 

Need help creating or optimising an SEO landing page?

TJ Creative is here to help. If you’re looking for an SEO content expert, get in touch to talk about your landing page needs.