The search engine optimization (SEO) world is seemingly infinite and ever changing. How do you decide which SEO tactics to invest in? How can you be sure that your strategy is up with the times?
For most business owners who know of SEO but haven’t delved past the surface, anything past standard website optimization is uncharted territory. Some businesses—even those working with an SEO agency—don’t even have the basics in place! What we often find upon onboarding new clients is that they are missing out on a no-brainer SEO tool: landing pages.
What Are SEO Landing Pages?
A landing page, also called a “splash” page, is a single web page built for a single marketing purpose. The homepage of your website might also be referred to as the landing page, not to be confused with standalone landing pages created solely for organic search.
Typically, SEO landing pages reel in a customer who has searched for a term and “landed” on your page. SEO authority and software company, Moz defines SEO landing pages as having one of five purposes:
- Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s)
- Get a visitor to buy
- Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.
- Get a visitor to tell a friend
- Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback
How Do SEO Landing Pages Work?
Creating SEO landing pages is different from adding new pages to your main website. Landing pages are not visible in your main navigation—they are only accessible through Google and other search engines—but they can and should filter into your site in some way or another.
The goal of a landing page is to rank highly in search results for a very specific keyword. Most landing pages will only rank for two or three main keywords, which means you will want to create different landing pages for different keywords. And remember, even a small change, such as switching a word from singular to plural or from present tense to past tense, generates a different keyword.
Who Should Use Landing Pages?
Not all businesses are a match for SEO landing pages. We typically recommend this strategy for those that:
- Drive leads through their website
- Have multiple locations or service areas
- Provide various service offerings
So, a business that focuses primarily on relational/referral based leads and active sales likely wouldn’t have much use for an SEO landing page. Meanwhile, a lawyer, restaurant, or ecommerce retailer where consumers are going online to find their type of business would most definitely benefit from developing multiple landing pages.
For example, we’ve created hundreds of landing pages for one of our restaurant clients, each one targeting a different keyword or combination of keywords. We started with pages for each restaurant location, and then expanded to terms such as “catering,” “lunch specials,” “fine dining,” etc.
The possibilities are endless when you start mixing and matching. To use another example, we often create landing pages for our attorney clients using a combination of location, service offering, and keyword variation:
- Landing Page 1: California Attorney
- Landing Page 2: San Diego Attorney
- Landing Page 3: California Personal Injury Attorney
- Landing Page 4: San Diego Personal Injury Attorney
- Landing Page 5: California Personal Injury Lawyer
- Landing Page 6: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyer
- And so on.
Get Started
Landing pages can range from exhaustive 2,000-word pieces to quick, template-style 300-word snippets. The key is to go after low-competition keywords with landing pages while targeting more coveted keywords with your main website pages. Raindrop Marketing can help you make smart, affordable, well-informed SEO decisions, whether they involve updating your website, creating landing pages, or a combination of both. Click here to learn more about what we do.
By: Adam Wagner