Having a well-optimized landing page can give you a head start against your competitors. There is no denying the fact that landing pages serve as the perfect opportunity for conversion of the website’s visitors into leads.
This makes the process of landing page optimization all the more important. But first, we need to have a clear understanding of what landing pages are. Let’s have a look.
What are Landing Pages?
In the world of digital marketing, a website landing page (also known as a lead capture page or the destination page) is a web page that appears when you click on an SEO search result or any online marketing or promotional advertisement. Landing pages are often confused with web pages that have multiple goals. Web pages often encourage the customer to explore more about the website or business.
On the other hand, landing pages are created with only one goal in mind: Call to Action (also called CTA). This exclusive focus is what makes landing pages the best bet to increase the conversion rates for your business. They also serve as an effective way to lower the cost to acquire a lead.
Why do Landing pages need to be optimized?
We cannot lay enough emphasis on the fact that landing pages are one of the most crucial aspects of online marketing campaigns. And because the sole purpose of a website landing page is to increase conversions and generate sales, efforts for their improvement become a mandate. When significant improvements are made, the results are quite evident in the business growth.
This is where landing page best practices come into play. The better your strategies are, the higher the conversion rates will be. In addition to that, the cost of customer acquisition goes down significantly and you will be able to acquire more customers by spending less.
Top 10 tips for optimizing landing pages
Now that we understand that the need of the hour is to optimize the landing page, we need to make sure that our strategy covers all the bases. Here are the top 10 landing page SEO tips.
Simplify your landing page
It is rightly said that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”A simple, less cluttered landing page can help you to stand out from the rest of the competition. When designing a landing web page, it should be your priority to make sure that you get the visitor’s undivided attention on the CTA (call to action).
The idea is to create an awesome landing page that provides effective and efficient communication by speaking less. You can always go for some subtle yet eye-catching visuals. But the highlight of the page must be your CTA, not the other content.
Decrease page load time
If you look at things from a user’s perspective, the speed at which a web page loads is paramount. A webpage that takes forever to load is destined to annoy the customer.
Certain performance issues can cause the loading time of your page to increase significantly. This is where the “mobile-first” design comes into play.
Any website needs to provide a good experience to the users who are accessing it using their mobile devices. Make sure that the website doesn’t load any unnecessary sources that are meant for larger screens.
Reducing HTTP requests is another effective method to decrease page load time. When a user tries to access your website, their browser sends an HTTP request to the web server for all the important resources.
As every request requires the transfer of data, a higher number of requests can cause the website to slow down. HTTP requests can be reduced significantly by the elimination of requests that aren’t important. By doing this, you can achieve a faster loading time for your website.
Straightforward call to action
The call to action that you are planning to use should be straightforward and concise. The purpose of Call to Action is to make sure that the customer gets the message loud and clear.
If your landing page’s call to action confuses the customer, then the need of the hour is to iron out those issues at the earliest. The simpler it is the better.
And it is not a mandate that the call to action has to be shorter than a sentence. As long as it is not too much and serves the purpose.
The direct and concise nature of the CTA will focus on what is important while eliminating the rest.
Add testimonials to help users
Testimonials are the best way to convey your customer’s enthusiasm and trust in your services or products. As they come directly from your precious customers who are happy with your services, they are certain to make a positive impact on the potential customers.
In addition to that, having video testimonials on your website gives you an edge over your rivals. And according to statistics, the testimonials boast an effectiveness rating of around 89 percent making them an impactful content marketing strategy.
Add Contact Information
Having a website without your contact information in it is an absolute waste of resources. Yes, there are chances that people will search on the web for your contact information. And once they find out that it’s missing, this doesn’t make a healthy impression.
There are several ways to provide the website visitors with your contact information. Putting up your contact number or email address on your website landing page is the oldest and the most effective way. Using a contact form works equally well.
A/B testing everything
A/B testing has always been an option that pays dividends. The more A/B tests you run, the better clarity you get on the kind of variations that attracts more interaction and consequently, better conversion from the customers.
Changing multiple elements at once is not the ideal approach though. Stick to the basics and choose the elements individually as it makes the analysis process easier. After collecting the data and statistics of what appeals to the customers more, you can apply the learning to redesign and achieve improved content engagement and reduced bounce rates.
Create easy to read headlines
It is often said that the first impression is the last. Well, that is the case when it comes to writing headlines. It is the first thing that a visitor sees when they visit your landing page for the first time. A good first impression makes them stay whereas a bad one can cause them to leave your page.
Out of the things to consider, the clarity and relevance of the headline matter the most. The headlines should be to the point and never ambiguous. Relevance is another important aspect because it helps the customer to stay connected to the page as this is what they came for.
Try Contrasting Colours
The best landing pages you will come across on the internet have one thing in common- the use of contrasting colors when giving CTA. This is what elevates them from the rest of the competition. For example, using a dark-colored background and highlighting the CTA in a lighter or brighter color makes the page look very appealing to the customer.
This applies to the other visuals too. Apart from catchy headings, customers respond well to images as well. Needless to say, the visuals should have a good contrast of colors and should grab the customer’s attention immediately.
Enable Schema Mark-up
Enabling schema mark-up helps the search engines to understand the contents of your site in a better way. A clearer sense of the content will help the search engine to surface your content to the relevant searches.
In addition to that, enabling schema mark-up is a good way to get your site up to a good position on voice searches. There is no doubt about the fact that voice search is on the rise and it usually provides one search result, the top one. Therefore, the need to have your website on the top of the search result becomes paramount.
Establish credibility and trust for business
In any line of business, trust plays a crucial factor. It is a no-brainer that customers are more likely to purchase from the company that they trust. As a business owner, one should know that to build a strong brand reputation, developing trust and credibility with the customers cannot be ignored at any cost.
Talking about credibility, some people put it even above success. It makes the customers think of you as a reliable and trusted resource. In addition to that, the customers look up to you in terms of competence and consistency. And with all these things, good conversion rates are bound to follow because the customers put faith in your services.
Final Thoughts:
It is understood that when it comes to landing page optimization practices, there are some tips and tricks that can prove effective in building organic traffic. The top 10 of those are:
- Simplifying your landing page.
- Decreasing page load time.
- Straightforward CTA.
- Adding testimonials to help users.
- A/B testing everything.
- Adding contact information.
- Creating easy-to-read headlines.
- Trying contrasting colors.
- Enabling schema mark-up.
- Establishing credibility and trust for business.
Once you go through this blueprint, it is time to sit back and analyze the areas where you need to improve. The above-mentioned list should be kept in mind while designing the landing page. It might be a bit too much for one simple landing page, but the return on investment (ROI) you get makes all the hard work worth it.
