Optimized Landing Pages for Organic & PPC Traffic
Well optimized & effective landing pages are designed with a very focused goal–to generate and convert targeted PPC and organic search traffic.
A landing pages is one that is designed specifically to appeal to a targeted segment of your website visitors. Target segments may be unique search keywords, marketing campaigns, PPC Campaigns or specific webpages/websites from which visitors arrive.
A landing page the first page that a visitor arrives to when coming to a website.
If a visitor had performed a keword search in Google and clicked on an organic result, that person would have “landed” on either your home page or an interior page on your site. If a visitor had performed a search and clicked on your PPC ad, that link would have taken the visitor a specific page on your site. If it was a banner ad that a visitor clicked on that brought them to your site, then the banner ad brought them to a specific landing page on your site.
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So, There are Several Types of Landing Page?
As with so many things dealing with SEO, the correct answer depends on one’s perspective and level of knowledge on the subject. It can generally be said though, that landing pages may differ based on where and how traffic coming to them is generated.
Landing pages designed strictly to convert visitors from places other than natural search engine results (i.e. from PPC, banner ads, email marketing campaigns) don’t have to deal with techniques that help them rank better, such as “optimized copywriting” or backlink anchor text. Nor do they have to worry about factors that typically make ranking more difficult, i.e. lack of indexation or the extensive use of Flash on the page or JavaScript navigation (two programming languages that the Bots don’t yet parse well and thus don’t place any ranking importance on). These types of landing pages are typically created with a relatively small portion the marketing budget, while the larger portion of the budget is used to buy the “clicks” or the traffic coming to the page from elsewhere. It should be noted however, that for PPC marketing in Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter, there is importance on how relevant on-page content is to the keywords being bid upon and the PPC ad copy. The more relevant these three things are to each other, the lower your cost per click is when compared to other advertisers bidding against you. This means that your landing pages should be well thought out as far as the content they contain–not just conversion effectiveness.
The other kind of landing page is designed to rank well in the search engines for your keywords and to obtain high conversion rates–if not to actually get the visitor to buy, then to move that visitor on to a page that will. To be successful, this type of landing page must distinguish itself from competitors by out-ranking them in the search engines for target keywords and it must be efficient at motivating visitors to take further action, once they arrive at the page. For this type of landing page, a substantial portion of your online marketing budget may be spent in the page development and, especially, the optimization of this type of landing page. Once complete however, it is a self sustaining, traffic producing, and traffic converting mechanism that may require little or no additional expense for continued high rankings, traffic, and visitor conversions well into the future.
With Landing Pages, the Visitor is ALWAYS Right
High conversion rates requires landing page design that appeals explicitly to those who land on them. If the visitor leaves immediately after arriving to your site, there is a good reason for that and you must figure out what that reason is and correct it. If the visitor leaves your site with a full shopping cart and never comes back to buy, there is a good reason for that too. You, as the website owner, that reason must be understood and dealt with appropriately.
How is this accomplished? Choose your audience by first choosing your keywords–and then building your optimization, text links, PPC or email marketing campaign around those keywords. The content of the landing page is then tailored to deliver a compelling message to that very, very targeted keyword audience. That is a key ingredient to higher conversions.
For example, you likely came to this page by searching in the engines for a keyword that included “landing page”. However, you may also be interested in knowing about keyword services for your landing page. This, like all good landing pages, is designed to rank well for the content the consumer is looking for and to present options that lead the visitor in a desired direction.
Landing Page Testing
Being experienced with web design, what does it take to gut an existing page, position new text within it, add graphics, revise some navigation links and save it to the server as a new page? OK, now lets say you were going to test five variations of the page to see which one converts best—we’re probably talking about only a few hours of work total, on the design side. The point is, multivariate testing or A/B testing adds a bit of time and cost to the process but refining the most effective copy and layout for your visitors means you are going to convert better and pay for that time with increased sales.
Landing Page Optimization
Those landing pages you want to rank for their target keyword–they’ve got to be optimized. The more resources put into optimizing them, the better they’ll rank and the more traffic you’ll receive with them.
You can search engine optimize a landing page yourself if you’re creative and strong analytically or you have many months to spend on trial and error. Remember that a successful optimization hinges choosing the right keywords, on optimzed meta tags, and on using copy that fully supports them. You may instead choose to make use of our optimizer’s knowledge, experience, time, and resources for a quicker turnaround on your ROI.
Start Your Project Early
Ball park six to nine months for your project if the landing page is designed for organic search engine traffic. While it will generally take less than a month to get your page designed and create content for it, the entire optimization process can take six months or more depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you’re targeting, the age of your site, its backlinks and its overall strength. Now, almost certainly, you’ll start getting traffic well before the six month mark but traffic flow takes some time to hit full stride and differs for each search engine. So, if your landing page is time- or season-sensitive, keep these time frames in mind and plan accordingly.
Track Success
Measuring the effectiveness of your landing page and your ROI is done automatically with real-time web stats and analysis software. Your stats clearly graph traffic volume of your landing pages, their conversion rates, and can even calculate the profitability of each of your pages.
The price of a Good Landing Page
What would you charge for your time if someone called and asked you to use your web design experience for three to five hours of work? Add that to another five to ten hours of SEO work (including testing and analysis) for a page designed to rank highly in the search engines and you have a good idea of the total time involved. If the landing page is being designed for PPC or other web marketing (i.e. not required to rank in the search engines) you’ll nee only an hour or two of your time.
So, using a figure somewhere between $200 and $500 per hour for the collaborative efforts of experienced designers and experienced optimizers, your page is likely to cost you between $500, on the low end, and $15,000 on the high end. You should expect all the bells and whistles–and then some–for a $15,000 landing page (and done correctly, in a competitive market, it would be very well worth every penny).
“Considering the increased profitability they provide, well designed landing pages are a valuable investment for almost every website.”
Enjoy Long Term Revenue
Well written landing pages tend to bring in more daily visitors to you site as they get older and as you build more marketing around them. For many sites, their landing pages are effective for years. Yet, adopting a strategy of adding additional landing pages on a regular basis is a smart, effective way to reach and convert more visitors on an everyday basis.
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