Landing pages that are created for long-term campaigns are the ones that best benefit from implementing an SEO strategy.
If your page is going to be active for six months or more, and even if your primary audience is intended to come from ads, it won’t hurt to bring in some extra traffic.
Search engine optimization is a long process, and results are rarely instantaneous. But, with a little planning, know-how, and some realistic long-term expectations, you can create landing pages that land you visitors and sales through organic searches. No need to outsource.
Optimize Landing Page Content With Keywords and Proper Markup
The words and markup that you choose to present on your page are not only what your users are looking for — but what Google and other search engines are looking for, too. Your content should be not only clearly presented but marked-up with proper tags to inform the search engine bots of your page’s structure.
So, first, let’s talk about keywords. Each landing page should have a specific audience and a specific intent. For instance, a health and wellness center might have a landing page targeted toward people interested in receiving massage therapy, and another landing page targeted toward people looking to become a certified yoga instructor. Once you’ve nailed down the intent of your landing page and the targeted action you want visitors to take on that page, it’s time to do some keyword research. Type your main keywords into Google to see what some related searches may have been. Check out Google Trends or use Google Ads Keyword Planner to find high volume keywords you might not have thought of. You can also utilize tools like SEMRush to view insights on who’s ranking for the keywords you’re targeting.
Once you have your keywords, it’s time to incorporate them into your content organically. Avoid “stuffing” your content with keywords — it’s obvious to everyone (including Google and Bing) that you’re fishing for traffic when you do that. You’ll want to naturally add the keywords into the mix, using synonyms of some of the main keywords as well.
You want your keywords to hold weight, so make sure you include your main keywords in your headlines as well as in the body of your landing page copy.
Once your content is complete, it’s time for the page markup. Your main headline should always be marked up with <H1>, and subsequent headings can follow with <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, etc. This establishes a hierarchy that Google will understand, and it also helps with your page’s readability.
Search engines have gotten pretty good at figuring out the intent of your content, so just focus on crafting quality content that human readers want to read and share, and you’ll be golden!
Create Impactful Meta-Data
The page title, URL, and the meta-description that you define will show up in your page’s search results on Google. Basically, your meta-data will determine if a person is enticed to click on your page or not. So, make it relevant and compelling!
Your page title should be descriptive. It should be short, yet clearly indicate what your page is about, and include your most important keyword.
For your URL, it’s essential to keep the name of the page similar to the title of the landing page. This enhances SEO and aligns with the actual page, which assures users they’re going to the right site.
If you’re using WordPress as your website CMS, like much of the internet, check out the Yoast SEO plugin to help you keep your meta-data on point.
Make Sure Your Landing Page is Mobile-Friendly
More than 50% of all searches are done on a mobile device. We’ve all used a frustratingly cumbersome website on mobile before. Think back to that experience. Were you in the buying mood after all of that pinching, zooming, and scrolling? Of course not.
In Google’s eyes, mobile users are critical enough that optimizing for them will give you an advantage over competitors who don’t take the time to do so. To be mobile-friendly, you’ll want a layout that is simple to navigate. Keep your relevant information near the top and be considerate when it comes to image size. While scrolling is much easier on mobile, avoid having your users scroll to find your headline or form. And speaking of image size, you’ll also want to optimize your images to be as small and compressed as possible.
One metric that is often overlooked for mobile-friendliness is load time. Though mobile speeds have gotten faster, those seconds matter. Mobile users can often be impatient and bounce quickly before your page loads. Because of this, Google weighs your page load speed while determining if your page is truly mobile-friendly.
If you aren’t sure what to optimize for load time, try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to get an instant report on some aspects you can improve on.
Focus on SEO for Long-Term Campaigns
Finally, let’s talk about those “short-term” campaigns. Google weighs a lot of aspects of a page when determining which one is the most “relevant.” One aspect is how long the page has existed. Many landing pages have a relatively short shelf-life, but some can be left up all the time and continue to get traffic for you all year.
So, what kind of pages would work best for generating SEO traffic? Any page that contains evergreen content that you plan to make it available for as long as it’s relevant. Leave the page up throughout the year (or years), and it will likely climb in the search engine ranks.
These are just a few ideas to get you started on the road of search engine optimization. There’s a lot to consider with your page, but like all SEO projects, it just takes time and monitoring to start reaping the benefits of increased traffic to your landing pages.