If you’ve delved even a little into online marketing, you’ve probably heard of landing pages. But what exactly is a landing page? What do they do? And are they worth creating for your website? We’ll look into all these questions and more in this complete guide to landing pages.
What exactly is a landing page?
Let’s start with the basics, what exactly is a landing page. Strictly speaking, a landing page could be any page on your website. It’s simply a page a visitor ‘lands’ on after clicking through from somewhere else. Or by typing an address directly into their browser.
Organic Landing Pages
We often think visitors only ever arrive at our home page. But this is often not the case. If your visitor has arrived from a search engine like Google, there’s every chance they’ll land on a specific page. Remember, Google indexes all the pages on your site separately. Let’s say your a plumber – and one of your service is bathroom renovations. You might have a page on your website specifically on bathroom renovations. Now let’s say someone searches for bathroom renovations in your area. There’s every chance the page Google shows in search results is not your home page, but your bathroom renovations page. Remember, search engines are trying to show the most relevant content. In this instance, your bathroom renovations page becomes a landing page.
SEO Landing Pages
Sometimes an SEO company will want to create optimsed landing pages on your site. These pages can be used to ‘target’ specific search phrases. Let’s say your SEO company has found that there’s an opportunity to gain from ranking for a specific phrase. Continuing our previous example, perhaps there’s an opportunity around “modern bathroom renovations”. If you do not already have content that can be ‘optimsed’ for this phrase, you can create a specific page that is. Often this page won’t show in the main website navigation, but will be linked to from elsewhere on your site and indexed by Google. These type of seo landing pages will be designed similarly to other product or service pages on your website. However the content will be updated to reflect the search phrase being targeted.
Google Ads Landing Pages
Google Ads landing pages are designed to be used with a specific Google Ads campaign. These type of landing pages are similar to SEO Landing pages. Google Ads work most effectively when the content you link to is a high match for ad and search phrase that triggers it. Let’s say you’re a builder and want to show ads to people looking for custom build and renovations and extensions. Instead of showing the same page to both groups, your campaign should include landing pages for ‘custom builds’ and “renovations” separately. This means your giving visitors info on exactly what they’re looking for, and creates a positive response. Good landing pages can also reduce your Google Ad ROI.
Email Marketing Landing Pages
Many email marketing campaigns make use of dedicated landing pages that link up with the email offer, or a designed to provide further information. Using landing pages in tis way allows you to get a really close correlation between the email and the next action. This gives visitors reassurance. Email marketing landing pages should also make it easy for visitors to take the action you want. If you’re sending out and email about your latest products, make sure the page you send them to includes the products you’re talking about.
Digital Campaign Landing Pages
Highly customised and refined landing pages are used in digital ad campaigns. These types of landing pages are not necessarily created for even a particular Ad group in your campaign. Instead, they’re typically created with a particular product or service + offer. The difference with campaign landing pages are that they have a “take it or leave it approach”. Often the landing page will not include links to the main website. Instead, visitors will be presented with a single web page that’s designed for visitors to take one specific action – Get a Quote, buy, sign up etc.
In this instance, the marketer is removing any distraction to maximise the chances for your visitors to take action. Campaign landing pages will often be designed quite differently from the rest of the website. Headers, Footers and normal website navigation are often removed. These landing pages also give marketers an opportunity to use brand new design elements on your page.
Split A / B Test Landing Pages
Split A / B Test Landing Pages are used to test the effectiveness of campaign or page elements such as headlines, colours, sign-up forms and calls-to-action. These types of landing campaigns can be used together with advertising, email marketing and digital campaigns. Some platforms used to run these campaigns will have the capacity to set up split testing. Google analytics can also be used to set up split testing website pages.
What should your landing page include?
