What are SEO landing pages, and why are they important?
SEO landing pages are conversion-focused pages on your website that are optimized to rank highly for a specific target keyword. SEO landing pages are important for gaining organic visibility in the SERP for queries being conducted by your target audience. These landing pages generate attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA). Search Engine Optimization landing pages focus on serving users based on each user’s search intent.
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Understanding Search Intent and Keyword Research
An effective landing page is created and optimized based on the user search intent. Understanding what the user’s intent is will help you decide what type of content to create and the conversion path you should implement on your landing page.
When conducting relevant keyword research for your landing page, you will see that there are 4 different types of search intent.
1. Navigational
Keywords are navigational if the user is trying to find a specific destination. Typically, these are users looking for login pages, specific company information, or “near me” searches for local businesses. It is unlikely that you will be utilizing navigational keywords when optimizing website landing pages.
2. Informational
Informational keywords are the most common for educational landing pages targeting top-of-funnel (TOF) users. These users want to learn more about a specific topic or problem they are experiencing. These queries often contain who, what, when, where, and why directives and are most commonly utilized for blogs.
3. Transactional
Users conducting searches with transactional-related keywords are looking to complete a conversion action. These queries may contain specific product or service names or “buy” directives. These keywords are most often used to optimize product/service landing pages.
4. Commercial
Commercial keywords are typically users who are problem and solution-aware and are likely to convert but want more information first. These keywords may be comparing two companies or products or questions about a specific product or service. It is common to use commercial intent keywords to optimize competitor landing pages.
Now that you’ve identified your user’s search intent and the type of content you should create, you can effectively optimize your landing page to meet their needs.
Optimizing Landing Pages for Search Intent
The bones of any effective landing page start with an AIDA design framework, high-quality, helpful, and shareable content, and then a well-optimized conversion funnel. The AIDA landing page design framework is to help you generate Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Google’s helpful content guidelines will help ensure your users receive value while also increasing your chances of ranking highly in the SERP. Lastly, a conversion funnel can include things like downloadable content offers, calculators, audits, tools, and more.
AIDA Landing Page Design Framework
Attention
You have under 8 seconds to capture someone’s attention once they land on your website. Use your landing page hero section and H1 tag like you would a hook to an essay. Once you have a user’s attention, they are more likely to continue to read, which is the first step in minimizing your bounce rate. You can capture someone’s attention through hero section design elements and through messaging.
For example, you can utilize font types, styles, and colors to make your headline stand out. You can also implement a captivating and powerful image. If you have returning users who are logged into an account, you can also utilize zero and first-party data to customize the messaging for each individual person. When focusing on the messaging, essay guidelines around hooks can be helpful. Hooks that are thought-provoking, funny, factual, or novel can help draw readers in.
Now that you’ve captured the reader’s attention, it’s important to keep them engaged with interest.
Interest
Generating interest involves understanding your audience’s needs, and the search intent can help. For example, you can generate interest by showing readers empathy and understanding. Readers need to be able to resonate with your messaging and feel like you can provide a potential solution to their problem.
Desire
Creating desire takes empathy and understanding a step further. Readers likely will have objections and questions. The desire section of your landing page is designed to address these objections and questions by focusing on the features and benefits of your product or service. This is also the section where you can create urgency by implementing limited-time offers, countdowns, or time-focused factual claims.
Action
Action is the art of persuasion. This section is your call to action that encourages users to enter your conversion funnel. Depending on the search intent of a page this action may be asking the users to schedule a demo, book an appointment, or download additional content.
For example, a landing page that is targeting an informational intent keyword could be more effective with a downloadable content offer. High-quality content offers like eBooks, guides, or checklists give the user something tangible to take with them and enable you to collect emails for re-marketing. A commercial intent page may prompt users to request a free audit or consultation. Transactional intent landing pages should always reduce friction toward the purchase action.
Search Experience Optimization: How UX and SEO Work Together
Google’s Helpful Content Guidelines
Focusing on people first and search engine second content is the key to an effective landing page. Google provides official guidelines, E-E-A-T, that can help you lead your content in the right direction. However, these guidelines should also include helpfulness, as the main goal of landing pages is to ensure users receive the value and answers they need to make a decision.
Helpful
Does the content satisfy the user’s search query or need for information?
Experience
How much first-hand experience does the creator have with the subject?
Expertise
How much does the creator have expertise, skill, or knowledge of the subject?
Authoritativeness
What is the reputation of the author and the website? Are they reputable sources for information on the subject?
Trustworthiness
How accurate, honest, safe, and reliable is the page?
On-page SEO Landing Page Strategies
Title Tags
Title tags are a part of Google’s SEO ranking factors and, therefore, should always contain your target keyword. These will appear in search results, link previews, and browser tabs. Title tags should be between 50-60 characters to avoid being truncated in SERP. Including the most important words first can ensure that you’re able to effectively and efficiently deliver your message to readers.
Typically, your title tag should either exactly match or be closely aligned to your H1 tag for consistency. Users read title tags to understand the contents of a landing page, and if the title tag and H1 contain significant variation, it can confuse the reader and cause a high bounce rate. It can be helpful to review the existing SERP for your target keyword to understand what title tags Google is deeming as the most effective. However, don’t simply copy and paste the #1 position’s title tag. You should ensure your title tag is unique and eye-catching to make your landing page stand out.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor but can help improve the click-through rate of your landing page. Even though they’re not a ranking factor, they should still include primary or secondary keywords, as Google will sometimes highlight meta description words that match a user’s query.
Meta descriptions should provide initial value to users before they even land on your page by calling out features, benefits, or key facts. Considering user intent can help you provide users with an answer to their questions before landing on your page. Additionally, including a call-to-action at the end of your meta description can encourage users to take the next step toward visiting your page.
Headings
Implementing a proper heading structure can create a better user experience by making the content more digestible and easier to navigate. Additionally, including primary and secondary keywords, as well as clear and concise answers directly below each section heading, can help improve your SERP ranking. Clear and concise answers directly below section headings can optimize your landing page for featured snippets, which will increase your organic visibility.
Alt Text
Image alt text is important for accessibility, user experience, and image organic traffic. Alt text is specific descriptions of images that can help the visually impaired, provide additional context, or provide information if the image does not load. Alt text can also help images rank in Google image results by including keywords. However, avoiding keyword stuffing and focusing more on the user experience is important. You do not need to apply alt text to icons or images that are purely decorative or described with an existing caption.
Internal Linking
Internal links are important for indexibility and passing link equity between pages. They can also keep a user on your website longer by providing them with additional helpful information on the same or similar topic. It’s important to use keyword-rich anchor text but to avoid using the same anchor text for two different pages.
When positioning internal links, placing them closer to the top of your page can help reduce bounce rate and improve dwell time. Additionally, it is important to be aware of tap targets being too close on mobile devices. This happens when two or more internal links are too close together and could result in the user accidentally clicking the wrong link. This creates a frustrating user experience.
Schema
Implementing structured data can improve your organic rankings and increase the chance of being featured in rich snippets. Depending on the type of schema that you implement, it can add additional elements to your SERP ranking that can improve your landing page CTR. For example, AggregateRating schema for product pages displays a star rating in search results based on user reviews of your product.
URL Optimization
URLs are a ranking factor and should be simple, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. A well-optimized URL can improve the user experience by providing breadcrumbs that indicate where a user is located within your website. Landing page URLs should also be limited to 3 hierarchical levels, as pages that live deeper in this hierarchy are deeper within a crawl path and may not be seen as important when Google crawls and indexes your website.
Now that you have a strategically designed landing page with on-page SEO best practices implemented, you should focus on optimizing your landing page speed.
Optimizing Page Loading Speed and Core Web Vitals
Google Core Web Vitals is a quantifiable way to measure on-page user experience. There are 3 main Core Web Vital metrics that can be optimized:
Largest Content Paint (LCP)
LCP measures how quickly the largest element on your page loads. A ‘good’ LCP is 2.5 seconds or less. A study published by Portent found, “A site that loads in 1 second had a conversion rate 3x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.” This means that not only can a good LCP improve your conversion rate, but it can also lower your bounce rate and improve your organic ranking.
The most common reason for a slow LCP is “slow resource load times” with your hero image. Unlike images below the fold that can be “lazy loaded”, hero images are one of the first elements to load. A well-optimized hero image should be a WebP format and contain specific size attributes based on device type. I recommend avoiding videos or gifs in your hero section unless necessary as they can create significant negative impacts on your LCP if not properly implemented.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
INP replaced the first input delay (FID) earlier this year and measures how quickly your page responds with every user interaction as opposed to the first interaction with FID. INP focuses on the interaction that takes the longest and good INP is under 200ms.
The easiest way to reduce your INP is by reducing your page size which can be accomplished through optimizing your landing page images. Similar to LCP, this can mean converting to WebP images, adding size attributes, and compressing your images as much as possible without sacrificing quality. A Google case study revealed that The Economic Times saw a 50% reduction in bounce rate after improving their INP. Improving your INP can lower your bounce rate, increase your conversion rate, and improve your organic search engine rankings.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
CLP measures unexpected shifts in layout above the fold on your landing page. This can create a frustrating user experience if a user intends to click a specific button and that button suddenly shifts and a user clicks on something different by accident. This can result in disruptions in your conversion funnel and higher bounce rates. A good CLS score is under 0.1.
Similar to LCP and INP, image optimization can help improve your CLS score. Adding dimensions to your images will indicate to the user’s browser how much space to reserve for each element when the page loads.
Increased Organic Visibility with Essential Landing Page SEO
If you have implemented the AIDA design framework, H-E-E-A-T quality content guidelines, on-page SEO optimizations, and improved your Core Web Vitals, you should see increased organic visibility for your landing page. As a result, you may also experience higher CTRs and should see an improvement in your CVR. The #1 take away should be to always keep the user at the forefront and the search engines second and that will set your website up for success.
