Landing page SEO: How to rank (and convert) your page with SEO

Why do you need landing pages for SEO?

Simple answer: Because you enjoy being successful!

Longer (and more useful answer): There are a few reasons why landing pages are pretty  pivotal in the realm of SEO:

• Precision targeting: Landing pages enable precise targeting of niche audiences by aligning content with specific keywords, enhancing the overall relevance of your website.
• Enhanced user experience: Well-structured landing pages streamline the user journey, improving user engagement, reducing bounce rates, and improving key SEO metrics.
• Conversion catalysts: Landing pages are purpose-built to encourage conversions, whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or filling out a contact form. SEO-friendly landing pages will further help in capturing more leads by targeting organic traffic.

SEO landing page vs PPC landing page

While SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) landing pages both aim to convert visitors, they go about it in different ways and with different purposes:

• SEO landing page: These pages primarily target organic traffic and are designed for long-term sustainability. They are meticulously optimized for specific keywords and provide valuable content. SEO landing pages may take time to achieve high rankings but offer enduring benefits.
• PPC landing page: Tailored for paid advertising campaigns, such as Google Ads, PPC landing pages emphasize immediate conversions. They are often linked to ad campaigns, offering a more direct path to conversion for paid traffic.

Common SEO landing page challenges (AKA why your page isn’t ranking)

In an ideal world, all of your landing pages would rank well for their targeted keywords in Google and convert people like crazy. But that’s not guaranteed to happen. In fact, it rarely does.

Why not? Well, in some cases, your ideal keywords are already dominated by other sites that have entrenched SEO efforts and backlink profiles. In others, technical issues associated with landing pages keep people from reaching your content.

Ultimately, though, a landing page that’s laser-focused on conversions will have a particularly hard time ranking. For this reason, it’s best to distinguish between landing pages you want to rank well in the search engines and those you’ll design purely to convert. (Later on, we’ll cover how you can use both together to great effect.)

First, let’s explain: What’s a conversion-focused page?

Conversion-focused landing pages are all about what happens when a person gets to the page. While a high word count is essential for ranking in search engines, too much wording can actually detract from getting that final conversion or capturing that lead. Notice how little there is to distract visitors in the examples below:

Here’s why your landing page doesn’t rank

In an ideal world, all of your landing pages would rank well for their targeted keywords in Google and convert people like crazy. But that’s not guaranteed to happen. In fact, it rarely does.

Why not? Well, in some cases, your ideal keywords are already dominated by other sites that have entrenched SEO efforts and backlink profiles. In others, technical issues associated with landing pages keep people from reaching your content.

Ultimately, though, a landing page that’s laser-focused on conversions will have a particularly hard time ranking. For this reason, it’s best to distinguish between landing pages you want to rank well in the search engines and those you’ll design purely to convert. (Later on, we’ll cover how you can use both together to great effect.)

First, let’s explain: What’s a conversion-focused page?

Conversion-focused landing pages are all about what happens when a person gets to the page. While a high word count is essential for ranking in search engines, too much wording can actually detract from getting that final conversion or capturing that lead. Notice how little there is to distract visitors in the examples below:

How to create an SEO-focused landing page

Creating a landing page that ranks isn’t magic—it’s a method. Let’s walk through the exact steps you can use to build pages that both Google and real people love.

Step 1: In-depth keyword research

A solid SEO strategy begins with comprehensive keyword research. Identify relevant, high-traffic keywords that resonate with your target audience. These keywords should align with the intent of your landing page. 

After that, seamlessly integrate your target keywords into various elements of your landing page, such as headings, subheadings, body text, and image ALT text, while making sure it’s still readable.

Step 2: Draft high-quality content

Above the fold, the page should include the key selling points and a call to action. There should be few other distractions here. This is established best practice for conversion-focused landing pages as well, but that’s where the similarities end.

Because we’re trying to rank in search engines, you’re also going to need plenty of content further down the page. It’s gotta be legitimately useful content (not just an extended sales pitch) and it should attract editorial links. Without this, you’re going to struggle to rank well for any popular keywords.

Using a simple vertical design and repeating the call to action as you scroll down, you’ll want to add as much value for the reader as possible

Additionally, consider incorporating multimedia elements such as images, videos, infographics, and charts to enhance the user experience and effectively convey information.

Looking for some sweet examples of long-form landing pages for your newly inspired SEO content? Take a look at this post about converting with extra copy to see how it’s done.

Step 3: Optimize the on-page SEO elements

Next, you’ll want to optimize your URL, page title, meta description, headings/subheadings, and image alt text for your target keywords.

When it comes to your URL, a custom domain does have some advantages for landing pages, but you might instead prefer to leverage the SEO of your existing domain.

Either way, ensure your URL is concise, descriptive, and relevant to the page’s content. Use hyphens to separate words, and avoid special characters or excessive parameters. Additionally, incorporating target keywords into the URL can improve search engine visibility.

Step 4: Make sure the page is mobile-friendly

Here’s something most marketers miss: search engines understand when your page looks bad on phones. And these days, that’s a deal-breaker.

Making your page mobile-friendly isn’t rocket science. Pull up your page on your phone. Can you read everything easily? Do images fit the screen? Are buttons big enough to tap? If you spot any issues, fix them before your search rankings take a hit.

Step 5: Optimize the page to load quickly

Nobody likes a slow page—especially search engines like Google. Think of page speed like a first impression. A slow page sends visitors running back to the search results.

Here’s what actually moves the needle:

• Resize your images before uploading them
• Remove any fancy features you don’t need
• Pick a good hosting company
• Keep your design clean and simple

Step 6: Add internal links from other pages that point to your landing page

Here’s a secret most people miss: Google follows links like breadcrumbs. If you want search engines to find and rank your landing page, you need to create paths that lead there.

Think of your website like a city. Every internal link is a road that helps visitors (and search engines) find their destination. The more roads that lead to your landing page, the more important it seems.

Here’s what really works:

• Link from your high-traffic blog posts when relevant
• Add your landing page to key navigation menus
• Include it in your resource lists or related content sections
• Drop a link from your homepage (this carries serious weight with Google)

Just remember—keep it natural. Link when it makes sense for your readers, not just for SEO. After all, if humans can’t follow your logic, search engines will struggle too.

Pro tip: pay special attention to links from your most popular pages. These carry extra SEO juice and can give your landing page a serious boost in search engine result pages.

Step 7: Build (relevant) backlinks from other websites

Quality backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites. But here’s the truth: you can’t force them. Instead, create content so helpful that other sites want to link to it.

Share your page with people who might find it useful. Write guest posts for industry blogs. Join relevant conversations online. The best links come from real connections.

The more useful and interesting the content, the more likely you are to attract backlinks and boost your rankings. You should also make use of link-building strategies, just like you would for any blog post or product page. 

Step 8: Test, test, test, then test some more

Landing pages perform better when you keep improving them. Watch your organic traffic numbers. See which search query brings in the best visitors, then A/B test different headlines, images, and layouts.

Small changes can make a big difference in your search engine result pages. Keep what works, fix what doesn’t, and never stop testing.

What to do once your SEO landing page is published

After the page is published, add internal links across your website that point to your SEO landing page. This’ll help boost its SEO value, as well as drive people to your landing page from other pages on your website and set them on the road to becoming customers. For instance, you could add a call to action to the end of every blog post on your website, encouraging visitors to visit the page to learn more about your offer.

Promote the landing page using the same strategies that you would do for a blog post that you want to rank well in Google. Share it on social media or reach out to contacts in your industry asking for a link. (This guide includes ten things you should do to help boost initial traffic to new content.)

Tracking your page’s performance

Once the organic traffic starts to flow in, it’s important to track what happens after they land on the page. The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report revealed that the average conversion rate for landing pages is just under 10%, so if yours is lower, consider tweaking your call to action or the design of your page to encourage more conversions.

At this point, it’s OK to start sacrificing SEO factors to help you convert traffic better. After all, what’s the point in ranking well if you fail to convert?

Be sure to track what keywords people are typing to land on your page, too. Are they what you expected? By keeping an eye on this, you’ll be able to spot areas that you can tweak as well as opportunities to rank better.

Keep it up (even after your promotion ends)

If you sometimes create landing pages for promotions that last a limited amount of time, you might be in the habit of taking them offline afterward. However, you should keep your SEO landing pages online even after the promotion has ended.

Many retailers make the same mistake of closing their landing page too early and missing out on traffic that would have converted. By deleting your page, then putting it back online, you’re essentially pouring any SEO juice you built down the drain. Don’t make things harder for yourself by starting from scratch.

An excellent way to get around this is by using a 301 redirect to make sure that the traffic you create will at least go to some use. It may even help to create a new page explaining how the promotion is over, but showing what other offerings you may have.

So, which should take precedence: an SEO-focused or a conversion-focused landing page?

Trick question, because you don’t have to choose between ranking and your conversion rates. Nothing stops you from creating an SEO-focused landing page and a conversion-focused landing page further down the funnel. Perhaps the former could push people to the latter?

Let’s say you wanted to create an SEO-focused landing page to sell personal finance software, for instance.

In this situation, have your conversion-focused page target purchase-focused keywords, such as “personal finance software,” “budgeting software,” and “accounting software.” These are the type of keywords that people pretty much already looking to buy would type. Just look at the search results:

People who search for “personal finance software” are looking to buy, and Google knows it.

With your SEO-optimized landing pages, though, you can also target more inquisitive keywords like “how to budget” or “how to save money,” and then direct these visitors down the funnel toward more conversion-focused pages. You can see the difference in the search results, which are much more oriented toward answering questions than selling something:

As your SEO-focused landing page will naturally have more content, it’ll be easier to target multiple long-tail keywords—and even local SEO keywords if your business operates only in certain areas.

Your choice of keywords will also determine how ready your SEO traffic is to convert. This can get pretty granular, too. For instance, somebody searching for “how to save money” will likely be less qualified to buy your software than somebody searching for “how to budget” because the former is a little broader than the latter.