Create A Great Landing Page

You should already have a basic knowledge of SEO from our previous articles. We have also presented Pay-Per-Click advertising and given you tips on increasing the traffic on your website. But to make this effort worthwhile, you need to know how to make the click worth the visitor's time.



The answer is: Great Landing Pages.

Landing page optimisation is aimed at improving a visitor's perception of a website. A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks the search engine result link or an advertisement.

A landing page gives you an opportunity to create a relationship with the new visitor who has clicked your link for one specific purpose. This webpage typically displays content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link. Landing page optimisation aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.

Here are some tips to help you design landing pages that convert visitors who click through your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.

•    Create specific landing pages for each PPC ad.

•    Include everything that your visitor needs to complete a conversion. This means your visitor should be able to sign up for a newsletter if you offered it in your ad, make a purchase, or fill out a form - all on the landing page. Whatever the call to action is, present it to your visitor on a landing page.

•    Test. For landing pages you may have to test several versions before you find the one that works for your current ad.

•    Quickly advise your visitor of the purpose of the landing page by using headlines. Your visitor must be able to see that the page will help them reach whatever goal they had in mind when entering the website. If they don't see it, they will quickly go back to search results in their browser.

•    Make sure your headline refers directly to the place from which your visitor came or the ad that directed him to your website. Match your language as closely as possible so that you keep your visitor engaged. This is by far the most important part of your landing page.

•    Offer Multiple Calls to a Single Action. Whether you use graphic buttons or linked text / banner (or both), tell your visitor what they need to do. Some people click on the first link they can see on a landing page. Others read before they take any action. Have links at the top, bottom and in between. Use a minimum of 2 calls to action in a short landing page, more in a long landing page. Make it easy for visitors to take action whenever they're ready.

•    Ask for only enough information to complete the sale or the desired action. This isn't the time to conduct a marketing survey. Every question you ask, every piece of information you require will chip away at your response.

•    Again: test. Try different headers, if you're using solo email messages to drive traffic there, experiment with how many fields you ask for in your request form. Test the length of your copy. 

Remember: The only real rule is that there are no real rules - what it takes is testing, creativity and ruthless refinement using analytics.