What Is a Landing Page?

Jake Sheridan
Dec 9, 2021
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As you go deeper into the areas of digital marketing, SEO, and paid search advertising, you will very definitely encounter a completely new vocabulary and set of concepts. You’re undoubtedly wondering how landing pages fit into your digital marketing strategy if you haven’t already. Creating a landing page may appear to be an easy process, and it is, but we want to emphasize the importance of landing pages in lead conversion.

Inexperienced marketers frequently route all of their PPC traffic to their homepage, which may be a costly error. Landing pages customized to specific offers are critical for creating a great user experience for visitors and increasing conversions with a focused message that meets each user’s demand.

So, what’s a landing page? Why is a landing page important? Does Google rank landing pages? We’ll guide you through all you need to know to get started.

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is any web page that a potential customer may land on, but in marketing, it’s generally a standalone page, separate from your homepage or any other website, that serves a specific and focused function.

A landing page follows up on any promises made in your content. Essentially, it is the next stage in the process of a visitor becoming a client. Your landing page allows you to make a trade, a special offer, a piece of information, or a bargain in exchange for contact information.

Landing pages can be click-through sites that link to another website, such as your e-commerce site, or they can be lead-generating pages. In exchange for the submission of contact information, lead-generating landing pages generally provide products such as a free eBook, free trial, contest participation, or webinar registration. A successful landing page will accomplish its goal by persuading a potential consumer that it is worthwhile to submit personal information in exchange for anything you have to offer. Landing pages may be found via a general search or through your company’s website, increasing the likelihood that a prospective customer will end up there.

There is no need to limit yourself to just one landing page, or even one landing page at a time. In fact, marketing experts would probably advise you to have many landing pages, each focused at a particular segment of your clientele.

Landing page example

Types of Landing Pages

Landing pages have only one purpose: to convert leads for your company. Here are some common types of landing pages:

1. Lead-generation landing age

A lead-generation or lead-capture landing page is intended to generate leads through the use of a data capture form. These pages are quite adaptable, but they are most commonly utilized in the middle of the sales funnel when clients are assessing your products and are on the verge of deciding whether to convert or walk away. It shows a request as well as a reward at the same time.

The incentive is the unique offer you are pushing to generate leads, and the request is the information you seek in your form. The request and the reward should be weighted equally. Whatever you are marketing must be worth the customer’s time in providing you with their contact information and joining them on your mailing list.

2. Landing page with a Call-To-Action

A click-through page, as opposed to a lead-generation page, does not need the usage of a form at all. It serves as a simple intermediary between your advertisement and the page to which you eventually want to lead your clients. It is frequently used to connect an ad to a shopping cart at checkout, for example. It simply takes a brief explanation of what the visitor has discovered by clicking through, as well as a bold and unambiguous call to action with a link to the end destination.

Use a CTA button on various blog articles to urge people to subscribe to your blog. This CTA might direct them to a separate landing page where they can subscribe to your email list.

3. Squeeze page

A squeeze page, also known as a lead capture page, is used to collect data. Unlike a lead-generation page, it is typically used at the top of the sales funnel and its sole purpose is to collect email addresses in order to add potential leads to a general mailing list. They are simple landing pages with big headlines and little information. A clear call to action informs the reader exactly what to anticipate from the click-through. In addition to the brief form field, there should be a link to the next step and an escape option if the visitor does not want to proceed.

4. Sales Page

A sales page is sometimes the most challenging to create. You are no longer merely prospecting for leads with this page. It’s one you’d use at the bottom of the funnel, and it has to persuade them to buy, which is a whole different proposition than a simple request and reward combo. The construction of the page, from the content to the landing page design, pricing, necessitates a delicate touch as well as a thorough grasp of your client’s demands and their place in the sales cycle.

You may either sell too aggressively at this moment and lose the transaction, or you could undersell and lose the sale regardless. This is where traditional salesmanship of social proof or testimonials must be included in your messaging, design, and communication strategies.

Why Is a Landing Page Important?

There are several advantages to creating a landing page for each of your online marketing campaigns or content offers. In this part, we’ll go over seven aspects that make this lead generation tool important:

  1. Landing pages can be tested.
    A landing page is a great place to get creative and test out different designs, page elements, and templates to see which images and text perform best with your target demographic. Furthermore, testing out a new landing page is typically less risky than making substantial design changes to your whole blog or website architecture.

Unbounce reports that 29.5 percent of landing pages have too much content. According to the report, landing pages in the business sector with fewer than 100 words convert 50% better than those with 500 words or more.

It is critical to test multiple versions of your landing page (known as A/B testing) to determine which one performs best for your specific circumstance. You can also make use of landing page builders; which are tools that assist you in planning, developing, and launching landing pages.

  1. Landing pages can provide you more information about your target audience.
    You can track which subjects convert the best by establishing many landing pages with segmented offers. This can provide you with useful information about your target audience’s interests.

You can utilize the information gathered from your own landing pages to develop a more focused and personalized marketing approach. Furthermore, landing pages not only tell you which content your audience prefers, but they also tell you which channels your leads prefer. This allows your marketing team to fine-tune the approach even further, pushing content and connecting with your audience through the channel(s) they’re currently utilizing.

  1. Landing pages can help you build your email list.
    In return for the content on your landing page, you’ll generally ask consumers for their email addresses and name in form of a pop-up. This can assist you in rapidly growing your email subscriber list and segmenting that list in order to offer more targeted follow-up emails.

People who have completed a form in return for content or information about your product or service have expressed an interest in what you have to offer. This guarantees that your subscriber list contains potentially high-quality leads.

  1. The goal of landing pages is to increase conversions.
    It is essential to provide value early by having a focused page that directly links back to an offer or next action. This can also persuade new site users to submit their information in exchange for an instant, monetary incentive.

A landing page’s average conversion rate is 26 percent, according to a study by Databox.

Many businesses direct visitors from advertising, email, and social media to their home page. This is a tremendous squandered opportunity. When you know a steady stream of targeted traffic is on its way to your website, you can enhance the probability of that traffic converting into leads by employing a customized landing page.

  1. Landing pages work to boost brand value and aid in making a positive first impression.
    By showing the important information your firm can provide, a clean, well-designed landing page may dazzle new visitors and convert them into leads. A landing page is a location where you may explain to your visitors what you’re offering and how it will benefit them. Even if a visitor does not convert right away, a well-designed landing page may raise brand awareness and assist nurture leads for future purchases. You can also create a Marketing Automation workflow to follow up with your new leads.
  2. Landing pages enable you to track metrics that are directly related to business objectives.
    If you’ve built a special landing page to advertise your new product or service, you may utilize that landing page to track metrics that are directly related to your company goals.

On that landing page, you could track conversion metrics to see how effectively your campaign is doing and whether you need to make changes to communicate the actual value of your new product. You can also track which sites generate the most landing page conversions and devote additional efforts to email marketing/email campaigns— or social media applications — in particular.

Landing Page FAQ

Does a landing page help SEO?

SEO best practices will guarantee that your landing pages rank better in search engine results and that you reach your intended audience. You will attract individuals who are interested in your subject, product, or service if you use the correct SEO. This helps you to create more leads, which in turn increases your conversion rate and contributes to your total business success.

The following are the fundamental recommended practices to follow while developing SEO landing pages:

  • Allow your keyword strategy to drive the content. This will assist search engines in understanding the structure of your content.
  • Take note of the URL used.
  • Keep an eye on page speeds.
  • Create backlinks.

Does Google rank landing pages?

In an ideal world, all of your landing pages would rank well in Google for their chosen keywords and convert visitors at a high rate. However, this is not a given. In reality, it almost never does.

What’s the harm? In certain situations, your desired keywords are already controlled by other sites with well-established SEO efforts and backlink profiles. In other cases, technological difficulties with landing pages prevent users from accessing your content.

However, a landing page that is only focused on conversions would have a very difficult time ranking. As a result, distinguishing between landing pages meant to rank highly in search engines and those built only to convert is critical.

The fundamental objective of an SEO-optimized landing page is to rank rather than convert—though it should accomplish both. As we’ll see, this is an excellent method to target search terms and drive organic traffic to your funnel.

The primary distinction between this type of landing page and a more traditional one is that an SEO-optimized page will contain more content. It will also feature more inbound links in order to reduce bounce rates. These factors may appear contradictory if you’re used to creating a large number of landing pages for sponsored ads, but they’re important if you want to rank.

While we don’t know the full complexities of how Google determines what makes a website rank high, numerous elements are commonly accepted to have an impact:

  • A large word count
  • A low bounce rate
  • A plethora of outgoing links
  • A reasonable keyword density
  • Lengthy internet sessions
  • Load times that are lightning quick

There is a lot of information regarding SEO best practices out there, not all of it is helpful. However, because search engine algorithms change so frequently, some experts, including Google employees, believe that the greatest SEO advice is to build high-quality sites with high-quality content.

What is a landing page and how does it work?

A landing page is a special page on your website where you gather contact information from visitors in return for a resource, such as an ebook, white paper, or case studies. This contact information is obtained using a lead-capture form, in which visitors input information such as their name, email address, phone number, and job title.

Lead generation is an important component of every marketing strategy, and there are several ways to accomplish it: social media, content marketing, sponsored advertisements, and so on. The individuals you’re targeting will not transform themselves into prospective consumers with whatever digital campaign you conduct, regardless of the medium you choose. To do so, you’ll need a high-quality landing page designed particularly to convert those visitors. If you don’t have at least a few landing pages on your website, you’re passing up possibilities to convert these people into paying clients later on.

A landing page’s objective is to convert website visitors and create a database of leads that can be nurtured with more tailored marketing campaigns such as email, direct mail, sponsored advertisements, or other kinds of targeted marketing before they reach your sales team to make a purchase.

How much content should be on a landing page?

The length of the content should be as long as it takes to communicate your argument completely and convincingly so that the user will take action. This might imply a content length of 100 words. Alternatively, 500 words. Or someplace in the middle.

Here are some broad recommendations to help you decide how much content to include on your landing page.

Keep your information brief and use bullet points if:

  • Someone requires what you’re giving right now, or your offer is time-sensitive, and they’ll miss out if they don’t act right now.
  • You’re not asking a lot. If you want people to download your e-book, subscribe to your blog or newsletter, or buy a low-priced product, there is no risk or expense associated.
  • You’re marketing to current customers. They already know you and are familiar with your brand, so you can concentrate on the offer.
  • There is a sense of urgency.

Longer content may be required if: 

  • You are requesting a large commitment. You must explain your investment if you want people to pay a lot of money (purchase an expensive product or make a large contribution), give up their time (plan a consultation at your office), or both (register for and finally attend an event).
  • You’re reaching out to new customers. Spend some extra time gaining the trust of those who are unfamiliar with your brand.
  • There is no pressing necessity. If you’re delivering a “good to have” rather than a “must-have,” the user may require a bit more persuasion to take action right away.

Don’t forget: check out the other definitions (over 200) in our growing SEO glossary.

Optimize Your Landing Pages Today

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of a landing page.

Landing page SEO is a never-ending game.

It is meaningless if your target audience does not notice your landing page. Search engine optimization directs the relevant people to your landing page, resulting in increased lead creation and conversion.

Creating a search-friendly landing page isn’t as difficult as it seems. Finding the right balance between ranking and conversion is the most difficult element. Ideally, you want to make sure that you are optimizing a page effectively enough to compete for the top Google results, but not so much that it is difficult to read. After you’ve completed this, you’ll have an exceptionally helpful page that performs an excellent job of converting search visitors into consumers.

Written by Jake Sheridan on December 9, 2021

Founder of Sheets for Marketers, I nerd out on automating parts of my work using Google Sheets. At Loganix I build products, and content marketing. There’s nothing like a well deserved drink after a busy day spreadsheeting.