Wheelock Group
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Landing
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SEO
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capture
content
conversion
different
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find
general
grand
help
keywords
landing
lead
leads
long-tail
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michigan
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optimized
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pages
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sales
search
services
site
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target
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title
use
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We can help research the keywords and provide the landing page as well as provide our marketing expertise to appy to the rest of your site.
Author: Dave Wheelock
Landing Page 101
This is a landing page - or at least an example of a landing page if it doesn't rank well. The concept of using a landing page in SEO terms isn't new, but still provides an excellent way for you to capture leads from the search engines.
Essentially, a landing page is one page on your web site optimized for just a few specific keywords. In this case, we're using 'landing page' as our main keywords and we'll try to focus on a couple other keywords to capture leads on the long-tail searches as well. Landing pages are sometimes referred to as 'lead capture pages' for the obvious reason that they are intended to capture leads.
Landing pages are used to grab leads from the search engines through excellent ranking on specific keywords. Not every page on your site can be optimized for your preferred keywords. This is what has made landing pages such a successful strategy.
Landing Page Terminology
Every page on your web site is a landing page. Since the search engines provide more than just your home page to visitors, someone can land on your site on any page that may be relevant to their search keywords. However, it's impossible to create one home page that covers all the keywords that might represent your site or business. It certainly wouldn't be optimized for any specific keywords at any rate.
So, a goal with web site page design is to optimize keywords within each page of your site to capture leads from the search engines. With all of the keywords that you may need to target for your business, extra pages might need to be created to capture the attention of your potential customers to get them into the sales cycle. These extra pages are what we refer to as landing pages. Sometimes a web site can have just one landing page, some don't use them at all, and other sites who use blogs, forums, and publish articles can have hundreds of landing pages.
According to Wikipedia - Landing Page, a landing page is classified in two ways: Reference or Transactional. A reference landing page might be used to target keywords on the search engines to possibly funnel visitors into a sales process, or simply provide advertising content. A transactional landing page would be a touch more agressive and ask for a sale, a signup, or some other type of conversion. This particular landing page will be a transactional landing page. A landing page should not be confused with a doorway page or cloaked page, and they don't carry the same negative connotations. In fact, they are referenced by search engines positively when properly utilized.
Let's Get Started
To build a landing page, we need to start with a couple goals:
- Conversion - What is the landing page providing leads for? Do you have a method of conversion? A simple contact form is a method of conversion right along with product sales, membership signup, providing input, asking for bookmarks, etc...
- Targeted keywords - Effective keywords must be carefully researched to find general and specific terms representing your products and services. Shooting for general keywords without forgetting long-tail keywords is a must. A landing page typically includes just a few keywords, but if the content is dense enough it is possible to shoot for a few more.
- Quality Content - A landing page needs to provide actual content that your site visitors want to read. Stuffing keywords won't cut it. This needs to be a page that you proudly display within your site just as a destination page would. Quality does not have to mean quantity though - you don't need to repeat other pages on your site for the landing page to be effective.
Long-tail Keywords
Briefly, long-tail keywords are longer search phrases using multiple general and specific keywords. For instance, in our example we used general keywords like 'Landing and Page', but we also focused on 'Keywords, Lead, and Capture'. So a short list of long-tail keywords might be:
- landing capture page
- landing lead capture
- lead capture landing page
- landing page keywords
- lead capture keywords
- lead capture page keywords
- lead keywords
But these aren't all. Since our page will be entirely indexed by the search engines and keywords are pulled from it automatically by Googlebot, it's very possible that other words we've used in the copy on the page will also help us out.
Writing the Landing Page Copy
Writing copy for your landing page can be difficult. Even professional copywriters have difficulties with writing for SEO purposes since it is truely a different style than typical writing. The main goal is to express what your keywords are targeting and include your business products and services. Headings should be clear and concise and should also utilize your keywords where you can. Text should use the same keywords to detail the product or service you are selling. Be sure to use ordered lists or unordered lists when you can to break up walls of text.
The Title of your page is extremely important as well. Be sure you use a descriptive but short title that utilizes your keywords. Also, the description tag should provide an expanded version of the title. Reusing the title as a heading for your article doesn't hurt either.
Try including links to other pages throughout your site to make the page fit into your web site more naturally. You can utilize those link anchor tags to help boost the performance of your keywords as well. The search engines do place slight extra value on words you've bolded. So, be sure to bold some words throughout your text, but do it sparingly.
Call to action / Lead Capture
The landing page needs some kind of call to action for your conversion. You will want to test out different types of conversions over time to find what works best for your site, products, and services. There are a few software packages designed to help you test (A/B testing, Multivariate) different conversion methods on your landing page. A free option would be to sign up with Google Website Optimizer services.
Track the Results
It will probably take some time to get your landing page indexed on the search engines, but be sure to continually watch it's success. You may find that your keywords need to be adjusted to capture more leads. You may also find that other words within your text are being found more that your target keywords. Build on that to modify your text, or create another landing page using those new keywords.
Tracking is a continual process that should be done monthly for the lifespan of your web site to provide you with the return on investment that you deserve. SEO professionals typically use three to six months as a target before you will begin reaping the benefits of proper SEO services. After that, adjustments should be continually made to reap the rewards.
Our Call to Action!
If you'd like to begin reaping the rewards from your web site, please contact us to get started on your web marketing plan now! A landing page is only one method of gaining extra exposure to your customers. We are looking forward to sharing more methods to help your business grow.
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This is a landing page - or at least an example of a landing page if it doesn't rank well. The concept of using a landing page in SEO terms isn't new, but still provides an excellent way for you to capture leads from the search engines.
Essentially, a landing page is one page on your web site optimized for just a few specific keywords. In this case, we're using 'landing page' as our main keywords and we'll try to focus on a couple other keywords to capture leads on the long-tail searches as well. Landing pages are sometimes referred to as 'lead capture pages' for the obvious reason that they are intended to capture leads.
Landing pages are used to grab leads from the search engines through excellent ranking on specific keywords. Not every page on your site can be optimized for your preferred keywords. This is what has made landing pages such a successful strategy.