Landing pages are the bread and butter to many brands digital marketing approach. A well-crafted finely-tuned landing page can turn a small company with zero online sales into a small company with a boatload of orders fairly quickly.
There are a number of ways to drive traffic to landing pages: Directly using pay-per-click (PPC), through email marketing, social media and more. But what about getting eyes on a landing page using organic tactics?
If you’re investing in search engine optimization (SEO) for a better search engine ranking for your website, why not implement a few SEO tactics into your brand’s most pivotal web page: the landing page.
Sure, you can get faster results by using ads, but why not kill two birds with one stone and bring a potentially endless stream of visitors to a landing page organically through the search engines?
Here are three actionable SEO tips for landing page optimization.
1. First Impressions are Everything
We’ll mention the importance of making good first impressions throughout this post, and a landing page’s first impressions start with the title tag. Your landing page’s title tag is what search engine spiders will see first, before anything else, and it essentially acts as the meeting point between the two, so make the title tag count.
The notion that humans make their first impressions, of an individual or brand, within the first 7 seconds is up for grabs, but when it comes to title tags and search engines, you have less than 70 characters to let them know what your page is about and make a positive impression.
Start by placing your primary keyword near the beginning of the title tag to emphasize its importance. If you come up with a shorter title tag that already includes your main keyword, say, under 40 characters, feel free to take it up a notch by squeezing in a secondary keyword if it reads natural.
The stronger the keyword connection, the easier it is for search engines to have a clear understanding of the landing page’s contents before they even really dig into its contents. Also, it might be a good idea to keep the title tag under 65 characters, as opposed to the 70 character maximum.
2. Write A Killer Headline
Your landing page’s headline can be a deciding factor for readers on whether they want to continue looking at your landing page or decide to click away. Since the latter is more common among visitors it is vital to take extra care in crafting an effective headline that screams “Read me!”
A quality headline will catch the eye and command the reader’s attention. By getting visitors to check out the rest of your landing page, you reduce the page’s bounce rate, which pleases the search engines. It’s also best to use the the H1 HTML tag for the headline.
If you’re able to include a primary or secondary keyword into the headline without making it look unnatural or forced, then by all means do so. The headline doesn’t need to be a sales pitch to be effective. Use questions that imply you can help solve your prospect’s problems. Try out bold statements that strike curiosity.
There is no specific formula for creating landing page headlines, it all boils down to establishing a clear, friendly connection with the audience from the moment they land on the page.
3. Help Bots Identify Images
Landing pages should be visually appealing for the audience, they should contain heaps of images of the actual product, what might come from its benefits, as well as reviews from real satisfied customers. Unfortunately, Google’s bots can not yet “read” images like with text.
So, it’s up to you to give them a helping hand.
You can help search engines understand what an image is about by including a related alt tag into the image. Think of the alt attribute as a product, or in this case image’s, label. It’s also a good idea to throw in a short description of the image. This isn’t typically done on landing pages, but image descriptions give search engine bots a little extra to bite on, especially if you’re able to naturally include a keyword or two into the description.
To learn more about online marketing programs that can drive traffic to your website, call us today at 661-702-1310 or email us at theteam@smalldogcreative.com.
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