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Last Updated August 1, 2024
Landing page SEO is a strategy that uses a specific page (not the homepage) to bring a visitor to a custom page that speaks directly to them. Learn why SEO is critical for landing pages, copy best practices from the experts, and see real-world examples.
Most businesses approach SEO the same way — zoning in on optimizing site pages or blog posts. But driving organic traffic to landing pages has its benefits as well.
Landing pages are created with conversion as a goal, so they tend to gather leads and sales. Blog posts or website pages, on the other hand, are more informational, often having multiple links to click on throughout the page.
So, it makes sense to drive organic traffic to landing pages. But what are the best ways to do this? We’ll explore the methods our experts use below.
What is landing page SEO?
Landing page SEO is when you optimize a specific page (not a homepage) to rank organically in search engine results. For example, let’s say you’re an optometrist. While you may optimize your homepage to rank for a keyword like “los angeles optometrist,” you should create another specific landing page to target someone searching “lasik eye procedure los angeles.”
The goal is to drive visitors to a custom landing page that speaks directly to them, increasing the odds of a conversion (lead or sale). You can use landing page SEO for organic search and pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns.
Benefits of landing page SEO
Landing pages are an important part of the conversion funnel — no matter the conversion goal. Optimized landing pages can help you to boost leads, increase sales, drive email list signups, or welcome new paid subscribers to your membership.
Let’s take a closer look at how landing page SEO can benefit your business:
- Bring targeted visitors to the page
- Rank higher in search with fast-loading pages
- Outrank your competitors
- Get measurable results
Bring targeted visitors to the page
Landing page SEO helps you gain better visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). The more visible your web page is online, the more opportunities you have to bring relevant traffic to the page.
Not only will you bring more traffic to the landing page from Google search, but that traffic will be relevant, given that these users searched for relevant terms to find the page. And the best part about this traffic? It’s free!
Rank higher in search with fast-loading pages
Technical SEO creates a better user experience for your site visitors. And a big part of that is optimizing page speed.
When you optimize your landing page with this in mind, your page loads quickly, which is important if you want to get those conversions. According to Google, the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.
Ways to speed up your landing page include:
- Reduce the size of your images without hurting the quality (or use WebP format for better compression)
- Minify CSS and Javascript by removing excess comments, spaces, and characters to reduce the file size
- Allow browser caching so browsers can store static versions of your web page to prevent downloading them again (and slowing down access)
- Use lazy loading, where videos and images only load when they come into view
Outrank your competitors
Some overlook optimizing landing pages, likely because most are for a specific marketing campaign that isn’t year-round. Or because they’re running PPC ads for the campaign, and think they don’t need to worry about SEO.
But this could be great news for your company. If your landing pages are optimized for organic search and your competitors’ aren’t, you can potentially steal more of their conversions.
Get measurable results
One of the best parts about landing page optimization is tracking your results. This lets you see how many leads and sales stem from your SEO efforts.
“It’s crucial to track the performance of SEO landing pages,” says Sam Yadegar, CEO of HawkSEM. “That way, you can monitor the increase in leads or sales and be able to properly attribute leads or sales to SEO campaigns.”
HawkSEM always measures results for clients, using our proprietary software, ConversionIQ. We used it to help Career Group Companies increase organic search visits for its job listing landing pages by 71%.
10 landing page SEO best practices from experts
There are many moving parts involved in creating SEO-friendly landing pages. Use these expert tips to create your landing page SEO strategy.
- Do in-depth keyword research
- Create high-quality content
- Create location landing pages
- Optimize for on-page SEO
- Optimize the URL
- Include relevant internal and external links
- Optimize for page speed
- Make it mobile-friendly
- Develop a backlink strategy
- Track performance over time
1. Do in-depth keyword research
Landing page SEO strategy starts with in-depth keyword research. Identify relevant keywords your target audience may use to find brands or products like yours.
When developing your keyword strategy, keep the following in mind:
- Search intent: Landing pages are for driving conversions, so choose transactional keywords that align with the bottom of the funnel. For example, “Buy [product/service]” or “Get [product/service] free trial.”
- Long-tail keywords: Landing pages are highly specific, so you’ll likely target long-tail keywords. Examples include “Affordable co-friendly yoga mats for beginners” or “Organic dog food delivery service in Dallas.”
- High volume & low competition: To improve your chances of ranking on the SERPs, use target keywords with higher monthly search volume and lower competition. For instance, keywords with close to or above 1,000 monthly searches and a competitive score that’s below 50 (on SEO tools like Semrush).
Also, use secondary keywords to avoid keyword stuffing. These keywords are closely related to the target keyword for the page. They can be synonyms, subtopics, or longer variations of the keyword.
For example, secondary keywords for the primary term “healthy vegan recipes,” could be:
- Plant-based meal ideas
- Nutritious vegan dishes
- Vegan recipe inspiration
- Easy plant-based cooking
- Delicious vegan meal options
2. Create high-quality content
After finding a target keyword that can drive search traffic to your landing page, it’s time to create the content. The content needs to be useful to the reader, well-researched, and well-written. This will keep people on the page and attract backlinks — both are necessary for SEO.
Here’s a look at the ways to improve the quality of your content to help it rank higher in search.
Readability
The landing page content should be easy for the average user to read and comprehend. It should also be skimmable. So use sub-headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to break up the information and make it easy to scan.
Page content
Use the keyword throughout the page content, in the page title (header), and the subheadings. Also, include other types of media on the page, such as images, videos, and infographics, to improve user experience and comprehension.
To improve conversions, include social proof on the page. Use testimonials and case studies to show the value of your products or services in solving customer problems.
Call-to-action
The call-to-action (CTA) gets visitors to take the next step toward converting. Whether the landing page’s goal is sales or lead generation, use copywriting best practices to optimize your CTA. It should be actionable, clear, and concise.
For instance, instead of using a generic CTA like “Click here,” you can use “Start your 7-day free trial today.”
3. Create location landing pages
If your company operates a location-based business or has multiple locations, create local SEO landing pages to capture local traffic. The target keywords will include location phrases like the city or state, and the page content will focus on problems and solutions for that location.
For example, Stan’s Heating, Air & Plumbing is an HVAC company that operates in Austin, TX and the surrounding areas. One of the areas they service is Round Rock, a suburb of Austin.
The company has a location landing page titled Round Rock Air Conditioning & Plumbing.
The page content focuses on HVAC services in Round Rock using location-based keywords like “HVAC service in Round Rock, TX” and “Round Rock AC and heating.”
When looking at the company’s page in Semrush, we see it’s a high-ranking page sitting in the number one spot for location-based SEO terms like “AC repair Round Rock TX” and “AC service Round Rock TX.” Though the traffic volume for these keywords is relatively low, these keywords have a high intent to convert.
(Image: Semrush screenshot)
Besides creating location pages, claim and update local SEO citations, since it’s a ranking factor. Optimizing your Google Business profile and other local citations like a Yelp profile can make it easier for potential customers in your area to find you.
4. Optimize for on-page SEO
To better help Google understand what the page content is about, optimize the on-page SEO elements.
Make sure your SEO landing pages have the following:
- Title tag: The title tag should be concise (50-60 characters) and include the primary keyword somewhere in the beginning.
- Meta description: The meta description appears on the search engine results page, so it should clearly explain what the page is about while convincing the reader to click. Aim for 155-160 characters.
- Alt tags: Alt text should clearly describe the image on the page so web crawlers can “read” it.
5. Optimize the URL
Seems small, but the landing page URL plays a big role in optimization. Choose a URL that’s concise, descriptive, and relevant to the landing page content.
The URL should contain the page’s keyword and no special characters. Use hyphens to separate the words in the URL.
For example, this HawkSEM landing page focuses on SaaS marketing and how a specialized agency can improve marketing results for SaaS brands. The URL is hawksem.com/saas-marketing-agency. It’s clear, concise, and uses the keyword for the page.
6. Include relevant internal and external links
Internal links give search engines additional context about the page. They also help readers find more information relevant to the page. Link to relevant internal pages using anchor text that contains keywords relevant to the linked page.
For example, on the HawkSEM landing page example, there’s a section about SEO. The page links to a page about SaaS SEO services with the anchor text “SaaS SEO services.”
But don’t put too many links, or you risk losing the interest of your visitors.
7. Optimize for page speed
Page speed is an important SEO ranking factor that impacts SEO and user experience. If your landing page takes too long to load, people will likely go elsewhere.
You can test your landing page load time using Google PageSpeed Insights, a free tool that shows how long page elements take to load.
For example, let’s take this Typeform landing page and put it into PageSpeed Insights.
After running it through the tool, we see the Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics used to measure user experience. This shows us how long it took different elements of the page to load.
(Image: PageSpeed Insights screenshot)
If you find your page load times are longer than you’d like them to be, try doing the following to reduce load times:
- Select the right host with at least 99% uptime and fast download speeds
- Minimize redirects, as these can also impact page speed. Only use redirects when needed.
- Reduce HTTP requests by minifying HTML, CSS, and Javascript code, removing unneeded images, disabling unneeded plugins, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
8. Make it mobile-friendly
More than half of website traffic globally comes from mobile device users. Not to mention, Google uses mobile-first indexing. So, if you want a great mobile user experience and to rank higher in Google search results, optimize your landing pages for mobile SEO.
To be mobile-friendly, the landing page must be easy for mobile users to navigate, read, and click through, regardless of the device size. The pages also need to load quickly on mobile.
Not sure if your landing page is mobile friendly? The Google PageSpeed Insights tool can also show how your page performs on mobile. Use this as a starting point for identifying areas of improvement.
(Image: PageSpeed Insights screenshot)
9. Develop a backlink strategy
One of the best ways to boost search engine rankings is to get quality, relevant backlinks to your landing page. This signals to Google that your content is valuable and useful, which makes the algorithm more inclined to serve your content to search engine users in the future.
The first step: creating valuable, well-researched, and well-written content that people find helpful enough to link back to. Original research and shareable resources like templates and infographics make the page more attractive for others to link back to.
Another way to improve your chances of getting backlinks is to get your content in front of as many people as possible. Sharing your landing pages on social media doesn’t count as a backlink. But you never know when someone on LinkedIn or Twitter will decide to link back to your landing page from their own content.
Other link building strategies, like guest blogging and reaching out to influencers, can be challenging and time-consuming. That’s why many companies hire a link building agency to do the tedious work for them.
10. Track performance over time
Monitoring how your SEO landing page performs provides helpful insights, so you can improve results over time. Track metrics like bounce rate, click-through rate, and conversions to determine areas needing improvement.
Use Google Search Console to identify which pages rank for your target keywords. Then check additional performance metrics like conversions on Google Analytics.
If you hire an SEO agency, they’ll do the tracking for you. HawkSEM uses its proprietary software, ConversionIQ (CIQ), to granularly track the performance of SEO campaigns, including landing pages.
“CIQ allows us to see which landing pages, and specifically which aspects of those landing pages, are creating the uplift in performance. From there, we can set a clear path to continued growth,” says Sam Yadegar, CEO of HawkSEM.
“With CIQ, we can determine lead quality and lifetime value of a customer and tie that back to the landing page they came in on.”
Landing page ideas and real-world examples
Seeing is believing. So, let’s look at landing pages that rank well on Google for relevant keywords to see what they do well.
Spotify
The landing page for Spotify Premium ranks for many branded keywords. One place Spotify excels is with the landing page content.
The copy above the fold is clear, concise, and enticing. Everything you want in landing page header copy. The copy makes it clear what you get (3 months of Premium for free) and what the value of that is (ad-free music and offline playback).
The CTA button stands out in purple, and the text is clear and concise. We know exactly what we’ll get when we click on the CTA button.
The page also features FAQs, answering questions users may have before purchasing. The FAQ section provides valuable, keyword-rich content, while reducing friction in the buying process by answering user’s questions upfront.
When putting this landing page URL into Semrush, we see the page ranks number one for branded keywords like “Spotify premium purchase,” “Spotify monthly,” and “Spotify deals.”
(Image: Semrush screenshot)
ClickUp
ClickUp has numerous SEO landing pages with comparisons between ClickUp and similar tools. These pages show how the tools compare, and are optimized for keywords users type into Google search when deciding between two tools.
For example, the ClickUp vs. Monday landing page, which compares ClickUp to the popular project management tool Monday.com. This page uses different media to present the value of ClickUp.
The header features a video that quickly shows some of the features ClickUp has that Monday doesn’t. At the end, a caption on the screen says, “Get everything Monday has and more,” driving the point that ClickUp is a more robust tool.
This landing page also makes it easy to visualize the differences in features between the two tools with a graphic that shows what ClickUp offers and Monday doesn’t.
In Semrush, we see this landing page ranks in the number one spot for “Clickup vs. Monday,” “Clickup or Monday,” and “Monday vs. Clickup.” This gives Clickup the advantage over Monday when users search for a comparison of the two tools because its landing page appears first in the search.
(Image: Semrush screenshot)
HubSpot
Now, let’s take a look at an SEO landing page that isn’t focused on branded keywords or sales.
HubSpot is well-known for its valuable free resources for marketers. And the company does a great job of creating optimized landing pages that rank for words users may search for to get these types of resources.
Here’s an example of a HubSpot resource landing page designed for lead generation. In exchange for the user’s name and email address, HubSpot gives them a free social media content calendar template.
The landing page content is simple and concise but clear, making it easy for users to understand the value of this free resource.
To improve readability, HubSpot breaks down the main benefits of this template into bullet points. The page also features images of the template so users can see what it looks like before downloading.
When putting this URL into Semrush, we see the landing page ranks in the top 3 for keyword phrases like “content calendar template,” “social content calendar template,” and “download social media content calendar template.”
(Image: Semrush screenshot)
Homepage SEO vs. landing page SEO
The homepage broadly communicates what the site is about and is
designed for navigation rather than conversion. For these reasons, homepage SEO often focuses on broad or branded keywords.
Whereas landing pages are designed for conversion so content is focused on one specific problem and solution. That means landing page SEO focuses more on optimizing for more narrow, specific keywords (often long-tail keywords).
For example, let’s say an ecommerce website sells women’s shoes. They might optimize the homepage for keywords like “women’s shoes” but optimize a landing page for a more specific style, such as “women’s casual boots” or “women’s leather chelsea boots.”
SEO landing page vs. PPC landing page
While SEO landing pages and PPC landing pages are similar in theory, some important differences will impact your landing page’s success. The main difference is SEO landing pages drive organic traffic from search engines, while PPC landing pages drive traffic from paid ads.
Since PPC landing page traffic is driven by ads, the ad and landing page messaging must align. You don’t want a user to click the ad and come to a page that’s irrelevant or contradictory to the ad itself.
PPC landing pages offer immediate results, since the traffic comes from paid ads. Whereas SEO landing pages will take some time to show results, just like any other SEO content.
The takeaway
While this guide gives you a great starting point for creating your landing page SEO strategy, search engine optimization is an ongoing process. It requires measuring your landing page performance over time and continuing to tweak it for the best results.
If you don’t have the resources or time to do this in-house, it may be time to hire an SEO agency. Book a consult with us to see how we can help you manage SEO for your business.