The Basics of Optimizing a Landing Page for Search Engines

Published on April 14, 2023 The Basics of Optimizing a Landing Page for Search Engines

A landing page plays a critical role in converting traffic to high-quality leads. Sadly, it’s the most overlooked part of search engine optimization. Marketers often focus on optimizing blog content and web pages. While necessary, you must remember the most important part of lead generation- the landing page. Here are the basics of optimizing a landing page.

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a web page that converts traffic to leads. It may display the website’s products and services, ongoing promotions, reviews, use cases, and a call to action. Landing pages are designed to draw the visitor’s attention.

As such, they must be clear and create a positive user experience that leads them to perform a specific action. It could be signing up for a free trial, calling to inquire about the product or service, or subscribing to a newsletter. You could be wondering how and where to start when optimizing a landing page. The Digital Spotlight Australia begins by checking out your homepage for four essential features:

• The design: It should take the user on a journey that leads them to take on a specific action
• Call to action: This is a prompt inviting the visitor to perform a particular step
• Sales copy: This is where the website explains the services or products it offers, how it solves the user’s problem, and what sets the business apart from its competitors
• Form: On this part, the business invites the user to fill out a form, converting them into leads

Steps to Take When Optimizing a Landing Page

Here’s a step-by-step process to help you optimize a landing page:

1. Formulate a Keyword Strategy for the Page

Keywords answer the user’s intent while helping them find information about your website. Therefore, marketers must formulate a keyword strategy that satisfies both objectives. Identifying the keywords to optimize is the first step in formulating a keyword strategy.

A look at your competitors’ landing pages may help you determine the ideal keywords to optimize. Repeat the process until you’ve developed a list of potential keywords. Alternatively, use a keyword research tool.

Not only does it help you find the best keywords for your niche but provides valuable insight into the inquiries a target audience is searching on a search engine. The additional insight informs your keyword and content strategy helping you optimize your landing page better.

2. Determine the Keyword Difficulty

Two aspects come into play when evaluating keyword difficulty-search volume and ranking. Using keywords with little or no volume makes your search engine optimization efforts ineffective because your site won’t attract much traffic.

You may have some latitude in using keywords with a low search volume on a landing page than on a blog post, but you can’t be sloppy. The ranking is just as important as search volume because it determines where your landing page ranks on a search engine.

You don’t want to be on the third and fourth pages of the SERP. Leverage tools that can help you determine a keyword’s difficulty.

3. Optimize Content for Search

The content on the landing page must also be optimized for search. This means structuring it in such a way that search engine bots can crawl it easily. You could:

• Optimize the title tag, headings, and meta description with primary and secondary keywords
• Add alt tags to the images to make it easy for search engine bots to crawl them
• Include internal links with appropriate anchor texts
• Add videos and images to add value to the content

4. Check the URL Used

Optimizing a URL for search is crucial. It helps search engines understand how the landing page fits into the site’s larger structure. Here are general guidelines for optimizing a URL:

• Keep it short (not more than 65 characters)
• Include the primary keyword to the left
• Use slashes to communicate different concepts

5. Include High-quality Backlinks

Link building is essential on landing pages, just as on other places like blog posts. It informs search engines if other users or websites consider your page valuable and relevant. Link building also indicates that other users have read your content and can vouch for and recommend it to others.

As such, you must create landing pages with shareable content to increase the chances of others linking to your page. You can include infographics and videos sharing valuable insight about your company concisely. Alternatively, publish content on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn.

6. Ensure the Forms are User-friendly

User experience is a critical aspect of generating high-quality leads. Therefore, you must keep the forms simple and user-friendly. Page visitors are often impatient, taking 54 seconds to visit and leave a site.

If the form on your landing page requires less information, the visitor will likely stay on the site. Longer forms will likely increase the bounce rate.

So, How Do You Optimize a Landing Page for Search Engines?

This brief guide should help you optimize your landing page easily. Begin by formulating a keyword strategy and evaluating the keywords for ranking difficulty. Then, optimize content for search and polish your on-page SEO. This means optimizing the URL, headers, and titles with the keywords and including alt tags for easy crawling. Lastly, include backlinks and ensure the fill-out form is simple and user-friendly.