In this guide, you will learn how to do SEO for landing pages and rank them higher on Google.
Whether you're a startup or an established business, you need to generate leads and increase conversions through your landing page. But there's a problem. No one will know what you offer if they can't find you. How do you do that? Through generating traffic to your landing page.
When marketers create landing pages, they usually do so with paid traffic (PPC ads and social media) in mind. However, based on the campaign and your goals, landing page SEO should also be an important part of your traffic generation strategy.
But when exactly is SEO important for your landing pages and how do you implement it?
We'll go over everything you need to know about landing page SEO and the impact it can have on your traffic. We'll also cover 13 tactics you can use to rank your landing pages and start taking advantage of the many benefits organic traffic has to offer.
Table of Contents
{tocify} $title={Custom Titles}
What is Landing Page SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves a series of best practices you can use to give your websites and landing pages a better chance of appearing in search results. By optimizing your landing pages for search engines, you can start getting organic traffic, rather than always relying on paid traffic.
Basically, there are two types of SEO:
On-page SEO: Actions taken on your landing page (both content and source code) to optimize it for search engines.
Off-page SEO: Actions taken outside of your landing page to improve your search engine ranking.
For best results, both types of SEO should be used.
Landing page SEO is a type of optimization for a stand-alone webpage with a specific CTA (call to action). When your landing page is "SEO optimized", it means that it has features that make it attractive to Google or other search engines.
The big distinction between a landing page and a regular page on your website is that the landing page is designed to do specific tasks: capture leads, generate sales, and, eventually, funnel visitors to another page.
But that's not all. The goal of an SEO-optimized landing page isn't just to convert. It must rank well in the eyes of Google. You can't sell what people can't find. Likewise, if customers find your landing page, but there is no compelling content or a clear call to action, you won't make the sale. Here we will teach you how to do both of them.
When Should you Use SEO for Landing Page?
While SEO is a valuable method of generating traffic, it is not appropriate for all landing pages. This is due to the fact that SEO is a long-term strategy.
Even if you optimize your landing page perfectly and follow all the best practices, you may not see any results for six months or even a year. If your landing page is promoting an urgent offer, SEO is probably not the right tactic for you.
On the other hand, if you're creating a landing page for an ongoing offer that you plan to promote for a very long time, you should definitely optimize your landing page for SEO. Here's why organic search traffic is so precious:
It's highly cost-effective: While you'll probably have to invest some time and money in SEO initially, it's still much less expensive than paid traffic. And once your landing page ranks, you'll enjoy a steady stream of free traffic.
It converts well: Search traffic is accompanied by a lot of intent. For example, if someone searches for "best digital marketing courses," they are probably very close to making a purchase decision for that product.
Therefore, if SEO is valuable to your landing page, it's worth incorporating it into your landing page optimization strategy.
If you don't have time to optimize your landing pages, you can check out these services of creating high-converting SEO landing pages in 24 hours.
How to Optimize a Landing Page for SEO & Rank it Higher on Google
Now that you know the basics of SEO and search engine algorithms, here are the steps to take to get your landing page ranked higher on Google and get more conversions.
1. Do keyword research
Google takes a lot of factors into account when deciding which pages to display for a given search. But perhaps the most important is keywords.
Using the right keywords or long tail keywords on your landing page helps search engines determine what your page is about, so they know which searches to include you in. So, if you want to appear in searches for "how to write an ebook", you should include that phrase in your copy.
However, before you start choosing the keywords you want to try to rank for, you need to do some research. The following is what to look for in a keyword:
It gets a good amount of traffic. Ideally, 100 or more searches per month. Basically, before you target a keyword, you need to make sure people are actually searching for it.
It's not too competitive. Consider targeting keywords with low competition, because the more websites that try to rank for a keyword, the harder it will be to get on the first page. This doesn't mean you can't go after more competitive terms, but keep in mind that you may have to invest more time and money to rank for them.
It's specific. If you sell "HP black laptop 15.6-inch screen", it's better to rank the term "HP black laptop 15.6-inch screen" rather than "computer." While more specific keywords generate less traffic, they are much more targeted, so the traffic you get generates a higher conversion rate.
There are a variety of keyword research tools you can use to research and analyze keywords. Semrush and Ahrefs are the most popular paid tools and will give you some pretty powerful information. If you're not ready to spend money on keyword research, Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that will give you enough information to get you started.
Once you have your keyword, be sure to include it in your title, subheadings, and throughout your copy.
2. Edit your metadata
If you are serious about getting noticed by search engines, there are a few other places you need to include your keywords. One of them is your metadata. This is the title and description that appears on the search results pages.
Many website and landing page builders like Swipe Pages make it easy to edit your metadata.
Be sure to use your main keyword in your meta title and description.
3. Use the right URL
Another place to include your main keyword is your URL. Depending on the settings of your website or landing page builder, your default URL may be a random mix of numbers and letters.
Most users won't notice your page URL, but search engines will. That's why you need to make sure it's optimized for your main keyword. For example, if your homepage is about "How to grow your email list," your URL should be something like "your-site.com/how-to-grow-your-email-list."
4. Include your keywords in your image alt text
Another place you should add your keywords is in your image alt text. This is a short written description of your image that is displayed when the photo cannot be viewed. It is also used by search engines to better identify the content of a landing page.
As with metadata, most website and landing page builders give you access to this text so you can edit it.
5. Write content for humans, not search engines
When writing your copy, it can be tempting to focus on including the right keywords at the right frequency. In fact, you are writing for search engines. However, search engines have become much more sophisticated and if your content doesn't provide real value or answer your visitors' questions, you're unlikely to receive much search traffic.
That's why one of the best things you can do for SEO is to write high-quality content that speaks to humans. But how do you accomplish this?
Before anything else, you need to consider the needs of your audience. What problems are they looking to solve? If your copy addresses these issues and offers a viable solution, chances are your landing page will be considered valuable by readers and search engines.
Additionally, the better your content, the more engagement it will generate. It's increasingly clear that Google uses metrics such as bounce rate, visit time, and social shares as part of its algorithm, which is an added incentive to create the most valuable content possible.
Finally, don't try to force keywords into your copy to meet a quota. If your keywords are relevant to the content on your landing page, you will naturally use them without having to think about it.
6. Avoid publishing duplicate content
This is a sensitive one when it comes to landing pages. If you have certain text or headlines that have worked well in the past, you might be tempted to reuse them for your future landing pages. Unfortunately, this is not very good for landing page SEO.
Google rewards unique and original content. It doesn't want you to plagiarize other creators, so if it finds your content too similar to another page (including your own), you probably won't rank for any keywords.
If you plan to use SEO to drive traffic to a landing page, your best chance is to create entirely new content from scratch. Even so, you can unintentionally copy another page without knowing it. That's why it's always a good idea to run your copy through a duplicate page search tool like Copyscape, just to be safe.
7. Optimize your content for "featured snippets"
Featured snippets are the snippets of your content that show up at the top of Google search results. This is a relatively new feature that the search engine has added to respond quickly and efficiently to queries.
Google looks at the first few results for a given search and finds a short snippet that more or less answers the question. It also provides a link to the full article if users want more information.
If a portion of your landing page is selected for a featured snippet, you'll be one of the first results users see when they search for your keyword, so it's definitely something worth trying to optimize your content for this particular feature.
Here are some tips:
- Ask questions with your subheadings (e.g., "What is SEO?"), then provide a brief, concise response in the next couple of sentences.
- Google often likes to include lists in its featured snippets, so answering questions with bullet points is also a good strategy.
- Snippets are sometimes displayed in a table format. Including important information in a table can also help highlight your content.
8. Add video to your landing pages
Video is rapidly becoming the most popular way to consume content on the internet. Google understands this, which is why pages with videos typically see a 10-250% increase in traffic.
And videos aren't just good for SEO, adding videos to your landing pages can also increase your conversions. For this reason, it's a good idea to incorporate videos into your landing pages whenever possible.
One of the best ways to do this is to include a video at the top of your page that summarizes your offer and includes a call to action. This can dramatically improve engagement, as a two to three-minute video is generally more accessible than a long landing page with lots of text.
For some visitors, the video will be all it takes to convince them to take the desired action. Others will need more information, in which case they can read the accompanying text.
9. Make your landing pages mobile friendly
Over 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Google is well aware of this, which is why it will penalize your landing page if it is not optimized for mobile devices. Also, if mobile users don't have a good experience on your page, they will leave it without hesitation.
The easiest way to remedy this problem is to use a landing page builder with mobile-friendly templates. For example, all of Swipe Pages' 200+ landing page templates are designed to display properly on tablets and smartphones.
Swipe Pages also allows you to preview how your page will look on different devices and create mobile-specific versions of your page that only display on certain devices. This gives you complete control over how your page looks on each device and ensures that visitors will have a great experience no matter what device they use to view your content.
10. Pay attention to page load times
If there's one thing users hate, it's pages that take too long to load. Google wants its users to have the best experience possible, so it rewards pages with faster load times with higher rankings.
Page load speed is also a determining factor in bounce rate. Research by Google indicates that the bounce rate increases by 32% when loading time increases from one to three seconds. Since bounce rate is also a factor in Google's algorithm, this is all the more reason to make sure your landing page loads as fast as possible.
Your landing page load speed is heavily influenced by the platform you build your page on and your hosting, so do your research before choosing a provider. Swipe Pages' page load speeds are 2.4 seconds faster than average, making it a great choice for anyone looking for a fast-loading page.
11. Publish your landing page as part of your website
If you're running a short-term campaign that will only use paid traffic, there's no need to worry about where you publish your landing page. Publish it where it's most convenient for you, whether it's a subdomain of your main site or your free Leadpages subdomain.
However, if your traffic strategy includes SEO, you will want to publish your landing page as part of your main site (yoursite.com/yourlandingpage). This is especially true if your website is well-established and has a high domain authority, which is a score that predicts the likelihood of your website ranking in search engine results.
When your landing page is part of your website, some of the authority your site has gained will be transferred to your landing page, giving it a better chance of appearing in search results.
12. Create backlinks to your landing pages
Everything we've talked about so far is part of on-page SEO. But to maximize your chances of ranking for your keywords, you also need to focus on off-page SEO. Link building is one of the important elements of this.
In the early days of Google, backlinks (links from other websites to your site) were the main factor that determined whether or not your pages appeared in search results. Naturally, marketers began to exploit this situation and developed a number of questionable methods of linking to their sites.
As a result, Google doesn't place as much importance on backlinks as it used to, but it's still an important ranking factor to consider. Fortunately, there are a few strategies you can use to get backlinks and still meet Google's guidelines.
The first is the Skyscraper technique. The idea is pretty simple: create content that is far superior to anything else out there on a given topic. Then, use a tool like Semrush to see which sites are linking to articles that are currently ranking for your main keyword and contact them to see if they can link to your page instead.
Another method is guest posting. Many sites need content but don't have the time to create it. Look for other sites in your area and contact them to see if they would be open to a guest post. In exchange for writing an article for their site, they will allow you to link to your landing page in your article. It's a win-win for both sides.
Finally, you can try broken link building. Is there a specific page you want a link from? Utilize a tool like Check My Links to find out if any of the URLs the page links to are broken, contact the website owner and offer your page as a replacement.
13. Keep your content up to date
Google usually ranks the most recent content before the oldest, as it doesn't want to provide stale information. So don't let your landing pages get stale. Update them regularly with the most recent information to maintain your rankings.
This doesn't mean you have to rewrite the entire page. Instead, update information that is outdated, refresh some design elements and try new images.
When you republish your page, Google will notice the new publication date when it crawls your site, which should improve your search engine ranking.
SEO for Landing Page - Summary
Your clients can't buy your product or service if they can't find you. This means that optimizing your landing page SEO is not a luxury. Think of it as the first step in building a sales process.
If you use the strategies outlined above, you'll drive organic traffic to your landing page and convert visitors into customers. If you want to take it to the next level, hire an SEO expert to take your SEO efforts to the next level.
Whatever you do, start optimizing today. You may not see a difference overnight, but with the right changes, over time, your landing page will gain popularity and the leads and sales will start flowing in.
