SEO Landing Page Best Practices

SEO landing pages are an important tool most digital marketing professionals wield to drive engagement and increase desired conversions. 

Today, we’ll walk you through our top SEO landing page best practices in 2022.

What is an SEO landing page?

Before discussing best practices, it’s important to understand what an SEO landing page is and how it differs from your other webpages.

SEO landing pages are specific web pages created with two goals: drive organic traffic and encourage a conversion. 

Unlike, say, a blog post, the purpose of an SEO LP is not to increase the website’s overall rank and search performance.

Depending on the SEO LP and the outlined strategy, the page may or may not be accessible through the website’s header or footer menus. However, the page must be indexable by Google—in other words, do not add robots.txt.

While not always the case, many SEO LPs pull double-duty as PPC LPs. We’ll discuss best practices for SEO-PPC LPs throughout.

SEO Landing Page Essentials

There are three essential components to an excellent SEO LP: clarity, positive UX, and conversion funnel.

Clarity: Both intent and copy should be clear, concise, and to the point.

Positive UX: A seamless user experience is essential to getting your LP to rank, and to encouraging users to convert. Ensure any add-ons like a form fill work as expected across different browsers and devices.

Conversion Funnel: The desired conversion must be the page’s primary focus. Multiple CTAs, copy that flows into a funnel, and on-page conversion tools like a form fill are extremely important.

SEO Landing Page Nice-To-Haves

Beyond essentials, there are many ‘nice-to-haves’. Specifically, design, A/B testing, and testimonials/reviews. 

Design: Pages should look inviting and follow all brand guidelines. Using multimedia to break up the text, such as illustrations or videos, may improve engagement.

A/B Testing: Use Google Optimize or another A/B testing tool to compare different variables such as headings, visual components, meta data, etc.

Testimonials/Reviews: Adding testimonials or reviews to an SEO LP can help build trust and improve conversion rates. Both testimonials and reviews should be authentic and earned.

Landing Page Best Practices

Keywords

As expected, choosing the right keywords is very important to successfully rank your LP in search engines.

Generally, since landing pages are part of a very targeted link or campaign, you want to focus on long-tail keywords. Use a scalpel, not a hammer. 

When possible, try to be specific on purpose and location. Get that scalpel very sharp. You don’t want “dentist”—you want “teeth cleaning in New York”. 

If the page is also being used for an Adwords search campaign, make sure that the search terms you’re bidding on are reflected in the LP copy as well. 

Technical

When it comes to the technical side of SEO, all best practices still hold. For example, a well-written meta description, title tags, and alt-image tags need to be in place.

Page speed is of great importance as well, especially on mobile due to mobile-first indexing. Because most good SEO LPs use plenty of imagery and graphics which can hamper load-speeds, use image compression (ex. tinypng.com) and/or caching tolls (ex. WP Super Cache) to help optimize appropriately.

Length

When it comes to landing page best practices, quality of content is generally more important than quantity.

That said, you still need the length to be substantial enough to thoroughly answer the search query. A little bit of extra length can even help if competition for your keywords is high. But overall, we like to keep our LPs short and sweet.

If you do write a longer LP, remember the longer the content, the more important “chunking” becomes. In other words, divide content up into small, easy-to-read chunks. 

Another best practice when creating a long-form LP is to massage in plenty of CTAs throughout. Visually, you want at least one CTA on-screen at all times.

Evergreen & Annual LPs

In most instances, an SEO landing page is evergreen by nature—meaning, the LP is expected to perform for a significant amount of time.

If the LP is short-term—for example an LP pushing a flash sale—it will be better served as a PPC LP. 

SEO LPs will need time to be indexed and gain rank in Google. The shorter the time frame, the harder it is to rank, and the less value-to-effort you get from SEO.

If you’re still interested in producing a short-term SEO LP, consider focusing on extremely niche keywords with very low competition. You may also find more success focusing on keyword groups that your site already ranks well for.

Finally, some landing pages may be annual. Ex. Holidays, Black Friday sales, etc.

Annual LPs are best supported by PPC, if possible. It’s also recommended that you update a previous year’s LP rather than creating a new one as it’s already been indexed by Google and carries some Page Authority.

Links

There are a few important SEO LP best practices regarding both inbound and internal links.

Inbound Links: A good backlink strategy will help push your LP and improve its rank quickly. Links from reviews and authoritative, relevant websites will have the greatest positive effect. 

Internal Links: While not as powerful as authoritative external links, a good internal linking strategy can help get your LP indexed faster and channel more Page Authority to it.

If the LP is PPC-focused, it’s generally not advised to link out to other webpages—you want to ‘trap’ the user on the page and force them to convert. However, if the LP is both SEO and PPC-focused, this best practice may not apply.

Language

Last, but far from least, there are numerous best practices regarding LP language.

First, in most instances, you want to stick to active language and push a sense of immediacy. Both of these tactics tend to drive engagement and conversions.

Second, have an appeal strategy in mind while you write. There are several appeal strategies you can use, including:

Emotional Appeal: Happiness, trust, and loyalty.

Fear Appeal: FOMO, security, health, and financial.

Rational Appeal:Statistics, figures, testimonials, and data that prove value.

Finally, stay positive, keep to your brand voice/tone, and ensure you don’t lose sight of key messaging or the value of the product/service to the user.

Rank with an SEO agency

Overwhelmed by all of our SEO LP best practices?

One of the best ways to get a landing page perfect is to partner with an SEO marketing agency like Pedestal Search. We’ve created thousands of powerful landing pages that don’t just rank in Google but also carry impressive conversion rates. 

We know how to conduct thorough keyword research, analyze the competition, write solid copy, and layout the page seamlessly. We’ll even A/B test variables and analyze results—two landing page practices that are almost always neglected by internal marketing teams.

If you’re interested in learning more about our services, book a free consultation today. We’ll be happy to audit your website and walk you through all the ways we can improve your organic performance.