Structuring landing pages – here’s how!
A landing page is a popular digital marketing measure whose core objective is to generate leads/conversions. An optimally structured landing page will bring in a lot of traffic in the organic search results and the desired conversions and the associated sales. This is because a call-to-action is only intended to redirect the user to the product/service. It is important that the landing page is well structured and well thought out, as there are many things that can cause it to fail. If it does not appear in the organic search, all the work has not only been in vain, the goal has been completely missed. How can you avoid the dangers of a high bounce rate or a fundamentally poor ranking? Which elements are essential for creating a landing page with convincing content and what needs to be considered from an SEO perspective? You will learn all about this in the course of the article.
The SEO landing page – what is it?
The aim of an SEO landing page is to rank for defined keywords. The call-to-action is a must element that must not be forgotten under any circumstances. At the same time, you should not overdo it with other elements and possibly overwhelm the visitor. In the best case, the focus is on minimalist features that reflect the company. In addition, its existence increases a large total amount of search engine traffic for the website.
Since a specific target group is being targeted, a good landing page is structured in such a way that it offers the optimal user experience. Without relying on much distraction, the user should be led directly to the conversion path. Testimonials that emphasize the unique selling proposition (USP) are also essential for a good landing page. All these aspects can be realized via an outbound SEO strategy. In most cases, conversions and the CTR depend on high-quality content that must be convincing in terms of quality. SEO measures are specifically designed for this.
Criteria for the SEO landing page
But what leads to a higher ranking in the organic search of search engines such as Google? SEO measures are also referred to as best practices. This is precisely how the target group is reached and corresponding leads are generated. After all, nothing is more disillusioning if, for example, the page loading speed fails and potential customers of the service/product leave in frustration. To avoid this, best practices are used to check your landing page for quality or shortcomings that need to be rectified.
The focus is on these SEO criteria:
- Develop an extensive keyword strategy
- Make content cralwable for search engines
- Check URLs
- Check page speed
- Backlink building
Developing the keyword strategy
First of all, you have to ask yourself which search intention the landing page should serve for the target group. Once this has been established, you can decide on a main keyword. This includes a long tail keyword with which, through specific search queries, a higher ranking can be achieved compared to the generic keywords. They also aim to increase the ranking and the conversion rate.
Secondary keywords are used to specifically expand the search and thus give the content more content. Once the main and secondary keywords have been selected, it is always advisable to integrate additional semantically appropriate keywords to further enhance and prepare the content. Keyword research helps to find the ideal search terms and a WDF*IDF analysis can provide a better overview of the competition, which can also reveal important search terms. If you can see which keywords the competition ranks with, you can either get inspiration or look for niche keywords that have low competition.
Content structure for the search engine cralwer
The bot of a search engine is also referred to as a crawler. The naming is due to its ability to read a website according to its content, which is generally referred to as crawling. The content is only half the battle if the search bot does not recognize it. In doing so, it will presumably lose high-quality content that the search engine does not include in its ranking. Because only if the search engine knows the content can it index it.
Content and design are closely linked to optimal HTML coding. Many do not realize that only the smallest errors, which can be implemented in the design and also via the HTML, are ultimately not crawlable. What do you need to look out for now?
- The headline: For many, the H1 tag is used too often or not at all. However, it must be set for the crawler and accordingly only once in the landing page. Other headings are converted into H2 and H3 tags. The content should be based on a concise and interesting headline. For the best SEO results, enter your keywords in the respective H tags.
- Alt tag & title tag: Did you know that the crawler is blind for images or videos? You have to conceptualize an image etc. for the search bot. This is realized via the alt tag, which describes exactly what the respective medium looks like. This tag is displayed in the event of loading errors, among other things, and can provide visitors with at least a vague understanding of the content.
It is important that the title tag is short and concise, unlike the alt tag. A qualitative keyword should be entered far to the left in the page title. After all, as the title of the meta description in the organic search results, it comes into contact with the visitor first, even before they reach your site. - Media such as images & videos: As already mentioned, image & video must be provided with an alt tag accordingly. They are used to symbolize high-quality content to the search engine.
- Meta descriptions: The meta description can be found in the form of a snippet in the organic search and is usually the first point of contact that a potential visitor has with you and your website/landing page. This is precisely why it must be seen as a figurehead and equipped with persuasive power. In short and concise words that contain the main keyword, you should tease what a visitor will find on your landing page and what it is about.
- Links (internal): If you equip your page with internal links, the crawler will also be able to capture the content even more intensively and better. Make sure that you link sensibly and only place the relevant links and therefore do not engage in link spam. It is best to choose the main keyword as the appropriate anchor text.
Optimized URLs
The importance of a URL should not be underestimated. As expected, it must also have a search engine compliant structure. This allows the search engine and the visitor to recognize where and how the URL can be classified on your entire website. It therefore covers the supercategories and the respective subcategories. The URL should be informative and describe exactly what it is about. Among other things, formal aspects must be taken into account. Individual words can easily be separated with “-“. Capital letters should also be avoided, as well as special characters of any kind. Conciseness also proves its worth here. A URL comprises a maximum of 65 characters and an ideal character length from an SEO perspective is around 60 characters.
If you want to do the search bot and yourself another favor, you can also work in so-called topic clusters. The bot also recognizes these, which results in advantages because you also rely on an orderly structure.
Optimized page speed
Perhaps you have experienced this yourself. A page is visited and it loads and loads and… loads. If you then want to access a specific category, the game starts all over again. Have you stayed on this page for a long time? Probably not. The bounce rate of visitors to your website can also be influenced by the loading speed and should not be underestimated as a ranking factor. Because loading times that are too long speak of a poor user experience, which Google will also evaluate negatively. For Google, for example, it is important that pages do not take longer than half a second to load.
But don’t be frustrated if this loading speed is not feasible for you. You can also achieve ranking success with longer times, as with a page speed of around 2.9 seconds you are already faster than half of the website operators on the Internet. Nevertheless, you should make sure that your site realizes the fastest possible loading time, because with 1.7 seconds 75% of the Internet is already caught up. Every millisecond, however small, can significantly reduce your bounce rate and increase your ranking and traffic.
Page speed can be improved by taking small steps. For example, try using images in smaller sizes. It doesn’t have to be 100% quality either. Often 80% of the image quality proves to be sufficient due to the resolution.
Backlink building
Backlinks are invaluable and can significantly boost your own website/landing page. This is because Google classifies you as more relevant if corresponding backlinks are set from equally relevant and qualitative websites. On the one hand, you can rely on link exchange, on the other hand, high-quality content is often a convincing factor for other sites to link to you. Among these, graphics, videos and statistics in particular encourage people to share them on other networks. For example, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
How you can optimize SEO landing pages
Alongside other forms of content marketing, landing pages continue to be a proven way of generating traffic and leads. There is also the advantage that the entire website benefits from the traffic. Landing pages that are optimized for search engines are explicitly aimed at achieving the best results in organic search in the long term. While many of these points can be optimized on your own, this does not have to be done single-handedly. If you are unsure or want even better results, you can invest in an SEO expert or an SEO agency and get a competent implementation of a landing page. Because the better the optimization, the higher the traffic and conversions and the associated turnover.