Landing Page Strategy and SEO Tools

Trying to explain what a landing page is to a "newbie" is like trying to explain the difference between a Merlot and a Cabernet to a beer drinker.

You see a landing page can be something as simple as a home page or an internal page or a stand alone page, but it has a "function" that is specific to it's use.  I will explain a little further down in this article. Yet I felt compelled to use my love of wine and love of marketing somewhere in one of my articles therefore, as weak as this analogy may be... Let me apologize, then continue back to the wines... They basically are both red wines but the bouquet, flavor, color, aroma, and what you drink them with etc. are as different as night and day, moving right along.

Most websites have general pages such as Home, About Us, Services, etc, but they also might have one page for each service the company performs, and dozens of helpful articles for visitors. The general Internet user will quickly tire of searching through the site for the information or product that they need. Landing pages are developed for just this situation.

The ultimate goal of a landing page is for your visitors to answer your “call to action”, be it buying your product or giving their email address. However, because the landing page – when built correctly – is a major portal to your site, it also makes it easier to track and analyze your visitor’s actions.

The first and most important step to creating a good landing page is choosing keywords, which are also great SEO tools. These keywords, the search terms a visitor uses in a search engine, should be specific to the main topic of the landing page. A good rule of thumb is to analyze the keywords, either by having a professional SEO specialist do it or by research.

In general, you want to use “long-tail” key phrases. Briefly, “long-tail” search terms are phrases such as “big cheap couches”. The reasoning is simple. With a “long-tail” key phrase, you also have “short-tail” key phrases such as “big couches” and “cheap couches”.

The second step is creating SEO content with your chosen keywords, geared toward your call to action. The SEO content can be an article, product page, etc., but it needs to be as specific to your topic as the keywords are; you can have more than one landing page, all geared to a particular area. The SEO content also needs to be informative or interesting in some way. Just because the visitor has reached your site doesn’t mean they’ll stay there. This is what your content is for.

The third step, and the way you get your visitors to the landing page, is by link building, yet another of the SEO tools. There are various ways to build links, but Pay Per Click (PPC) and SEO articles are the most common. With PPC, you have an advertising banner, sponsored address, etc. The user sees the advertising banner, clicks on it, and the link brings them to your landing page – which is geared toward that particular advertisement. You pay a fee for the click, but you also have a viable user – in other words, one that’s already interested in your product or information.

SEO articles are written much the same way as your landing page, using keywords, key phrases and informative content. Once they’ve been written, they are submitted to article submission or directory submission sites. On those sites, your visitors find a link within the article that sends them to your landing page, which, once again, is geared toward that particular article.

Although there are many SEO tools available, landing pages are a great way to quantify your readers, clients, potential customers – and great landing pages bring a wave of visitors.