We've talked about landing pages before, but it’s an important topic that often gets overlooked because it requires the creation of more content. Good, quality content is an important component of any website and has become even more important recently as a part of recent algorithm updates by Google and other search engines. Not to mention that it makes for a better overall site visitor experience.
What Exactly Is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a unique Web page that visitor reaches after clicking on an ad or a link in the search results or through some other method such as email marketing. It’s a page that includes information about a particular topic and has a clear call to action – whether it’s a form that collects information or an add-to-cart function for e-commerce sites. The content of the page addresses a particular topic or audience and encourages the visitor to take an action.
Why Are Landing Pages Important?
Imagine you are searching for a big red wagon. You a search for “big red wagon” on your favorite search engine and find a number of listings you can select to click on. You decide on one, but when you click through to the page, all you get is to a home page of a site that sells all types of wagons and other similar products and you have to hunt around the site to find a big red wagon. So, you click back and select another link and when you get to that site you are immediately directed to a page that has wagons, but it’s a whole listing of different types of wagons so you need to search around that page or maybe even others to find a big red wagon. You click back again and select yet another link. This time you come to a page that is all about the big red wagon and there is complete information about what it is, what it includes, the price, and how to buy the product.
Which is going to make for the better user experience? The page that offers me all of the specific information that I’m looking for and tells me exactly how I can buy the product.
Of course, directing a visitor to a specific page is easy (and important) to do with pay-per-click campaigns as a specific URL can be used in an ad or for a specific key terms. It gets a little trickier with organic optimization as you are at the mercy of what page(s) the search engines decide to show for a particular search. However, by creating landing pages, you are basically telling the search engine the best page for a particular key term or small set of key terms if it is properly optimized and targeted.
How Are These Pages Going to Increase My Conversions?
It’s pretty simple – if content is targeted and informative, and there is a good, clear call to action, the likelihood that someone is going to contact/purchase increases. A good landing page speaks directly to the audience and fulfills a need.
Not All Landing Pages Are Created Equal
The better planned and thought out a landing page, the more opportunity there is to create a conversion. But, it’s not only about creating conversions, it’s important that these conversions are strong, qualified leads. A strategy is needed in developing landing pages to ensure that they are targeted and monitoring is needed to determine if they are actually working. Different landing pages can be tested through multivariate testing to see which performs better and creates more conversions.
Are you taking advantage of this important method for targeting content for your visitors? If not, you are most likely missing out on getting qualified leads. If you're unsure of the best way to create landing pages, let us know and we'd be happy to talk further.
Find the author on social media:
+Elissa Mitchell
@ezmitchell