The 7 Components of Successful Landing Pages

Are your conversion rates nothing to write home about? Do you feel like the copy and design of your landing page needs a big makeover? Give your post-click marketing a boost by evaluating your approach and ensuring that your landing pages implement these 7 important components.

1. Match Your Advertising with Your Landing Pages

Does the pre-click content match the post-click content? Make sure that there is continuity between your advertising and landing page. If you have several different types of ads targeting a variety of keywords but you are leading people to the same few landing pages, the continuity is most likely not as tight as it could be. In order to match messages well, you must connect all of the dots for your site visitors and make sure that your advertising meets its promises. Make your landing pages as specific as possible.

2. Measure the Value of Your Landing Page Content

Does your landing page content provide visitors with value or is it full of superficial fluff? Landing pages full of keyword stuffed content and marketing-speak won’t get you anywhere. Provide users with useful, entertaining, and relevant information that is tailored to whatever they were searching for.

3. Visuals

Landing pages are a beauty contest and your chance to make a great first impression when building your brand. Make sure your landing pages are up to par by hiring a qualified graphic designer to spruce them up for you. If your landing pages are attractive, it says a lot about your brand.

4. Make it Interactive

Landing pages today should contain a lot more than just flat text and images. Flash, widgets, video, and social networking applications that reinforce your message rather than distract from it can go a long way in helping you connect better with users. The key to success with creating interactive landing pages is to ensure that these extras are well incorporated into the overall design and message of your landing page. Don’t slap things on as an afterthought.

5. Derive Value from Non-Converting Visitors

If approximately 20% of visitors to your landing pages convert, that doesn’t mean the other 80% should be forgotten. You can provide non-converting visitors with value because they may potentially convert in the future. For example, you can point them to another page on your website that they perhaps might be interested in and convert them there.
You should always deliver useful content on your landing pages to ensure that people derive value from it and leave feeling like they had a positive experience/interaction with your website. You can also analyze what non-converting visitors do by providing them with different options on multi-step landing pages. Measure what people click and when to determine what kind of targeted improvements you can make.

6. Keep it Fresh

Revisit your landing pages frequently to update them and keep them from becoming stale. Check your content regularly to be sure that it is current, along with any offers you are making. Nothing will turn site visitors off more than an expired offer. You also have to keep the design of your page up to date. The look and feel of your landing pages tells visitors whether or not you are on top of things.

7. Push the Envelope

Are your landing pages bold and unique or painfully commonplace? Don’t be afraid to be creative when you are creating content for your landing pages. Try standing out from the crowd rather than sticking with the well-worn messages you have used time and time again. Landing pages offer an unmatched opportunity for you to experiment with your message because they only receive a relatively small portion of your overall traffic. You can use metrics to measure your results and alter your methods if they are not panning out as hoped.

Discover 8 Secret Tips To Getting To The Top Of The Search Engines Rankings

Getting found by the search engines can be a frustrating experience if you are not sure what you are doing. There is nothing to be afraid of though, this article will help you get started on your way to much higher search engine rankings. So let’s get started:

1. Keep your old domain name and do not purchase a new domain name unless you absolutely have to. The search engines like domains that have been around for a while. You could also redirect your old domain to your new one in order not to go down in the ranking. If you're redesigning your site or building a new site and have to use a new domain, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or longer to get back where you were.

2. Don’t optimize your website for the search engines. Make sure you are optimizing for your target market. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into the search engines search box. If these people are typing in search words that relate to what your website offers, then they are most likely part of your target market. Good keywords and keyword phrases, found through research, are crucial in getting high search engine rankings.

3. Design your website around your keywords. Don’t even start writing copy until you have found your keywords and then you will want to sprinkle your keywords all over your site and your pages. Also, make use of long tail keywords or phrases. These really help to qualify your target market and leads to higher quality leads. They know exactly what they are looking for and when they are led to your site they will be more likely ready to buy.

4. Make sure you make your site friendly to the search engine spiders. Search engines can’t interpret graphics, fill out forms and can’t read Java Script links and menus. You still want to use them, but make sure that the search engine spiders can navigate your site and can find the other pages on your site. The search engine spiders will never find a drop down menu and will never know about your other pages.

5. Label your internal text links and clickable images (alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as you possible can. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (the anchor text) to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click here" or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. Important hint, use your keywords and key phrases to describe.

6. Write copy for your website that uses your keyword phrases, but make sure your copy is compelling to you target market. This is so important for a successful website. The search engines want to read keyword rich copy on your pages so they know how to classify your site. Don’t hide your copy in graphics or in flash. Write your copy using your most relevant keyword phrases while you are giving your visitors the information they have been looking for.

7. Title tags are given a lot of weight by the search engines. What ever keyword phrase you have written about in your copy, should be used in your title tag. The information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it is on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your site.

8. Make sure that other sites can link with your site. The ability for other sites to link to your site is extremely important for successful search engine optimization, because all the major search engines place more emphasis on your sites link popularity. You also want to be very careful not to link to a crappy site. Both your customers and the search engines will frown on you and will hurt you search engine ranking.

If you have done the above 8 things correctly, you should start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. Using free Google Analytics, you can track and measure the things you want to know. It is also a good idea to add new content every once in awhile. All of these steps taken together will go a long way in helping you with your search engine optimization and search engine ranking.