Optimize Your Landing Page With These 11 Tips

It is important to properly optimize your landing page because there are so many components of a successful landing page that need to work together to accomplish the objective, which is turning your website visitors into leads and sales. There is a very good chance that your online marketing campaign will require multiple landing pages and you will constantly be testing different layouts and concepts, so wouldn’t it be handy if you had a quick landing page optimization list to use when it comes time to create new landing pages? (or to use in order to audit your current landing page or pages)

Well, we have put together a list of eleven key points that you need to make sure you have optimized in order to create an effective landing pages that produces results. These tips cover all the key components that you need to make sure are optimized in your landing page. This is just a guide, and some landing pages will have additional requirements, but these tips are a great starting point.

1. SEO Optimized Title, URL and Meta Description

Now, even if you are going to begin to drive traffic to your landing page through paid search marketing and PPC, it is still a great idea to optimize your landing page for organic search traffic. In the event that you work towards organic traffic in the future having your landing page title, URL, and meta description optimized will greatly benefit your efforts. Your title and URL should include your target keyword in order to attract clicks in the search results. The meta description will not impact organic rankings, but it can be used to help attract clicks, so make sure that your message is portrayed in that description to attract clicks.

2. Headings Need to Entice Action

The headings of your landing page should entice your visitors to perform the desired action on the page. This can be anything from completing an email submit lead form to making a purchase. Imagine if a health and nutrition website was offering their visitors a free eBook with diet tips. Would the heading “Diet Tips eBook” or “Free Diet Tips: 10 Tips to Help You Drop 5 Pounds This Week” entice you more to fill out the form? Make sure that your heading is designed to create actions.

3. Keep Your Landing Page Content Consistent With Your Ad Copy

You will want to make sure that the content on your landing page is consistent with the ad copy that brought the visitor to your website. Your headline along with the copy throughout the landing page should be the same language and subject that was featured in your ad because something within the ad enticed the consumer to click through. Keeping it consistent will greatly increase the conversion rate. If there isn’t a consistent feel the visitor is more likely to bounce off the landing page without completing an action.

4. Sub Heading Should Explain Your Offer

While your heading needs to entice action, your sub heading needs to explain the offer to the visitor. A landing page that is properly optimized will have a heading that immediately entices the visitor and the sub heading will explain the offer to them immediately, pushing them to convert. When we explained the heading above we used the following as an example of a good heading: “Free Diet Tips: 10 Tips to Help You Drop 5 Pounds This Week” – staying with this example, an effective sub heading would be, “Learn how you can make simple changes that will shed 5 pound in just one week.”

5. Collect Proper Information Specific to Your Goal

You will notice that some landing pages ask for a long list of information from the user while some offers simply ask for a name and email address. The amount of information you ask for will depend on your offer. Something along the lines of a financial offer will require more detailed information, while something like a free eBook may only require a name and email address. You will get more submissions with a short form, but you can increase the quality of the prospect by including more fields. Don’t worry about the length of your form; instead make sure that you are collecting the information that is required to meet the goal of your landing page.

6. Avoid Generic Submit Buttons

Make sure that you create a custom submit button that matches the look and feel of your landing page. Avoid using the common submit buttons that are seem on many websites. Visitors are becoming very computer savvy and many will automatically associate your landing page with one of lower quality if you use submit buttons that are often used on gimmicky landing pages. Not only will they blend into your design better, but also you can customize them a bit more. Instead of generic “Submit” text on the button you can have something like “Get Your FREE eBook Now!”

7. Your Images Should Include the End Result of Completing the Offer

The most successful landing pages use images that give the visitor an idea of what they can expect if they complete the offer. So, if your offer is an eBook then make sure that you include a high quality image of the actual product. Avoid using random images that do not reflect what the visitor is going to receive.

8. The 5 Second Test

You need to be able to look at your landing page for five seconds and completely understand what the page is about, what the offer is, and how to get that offer. If it takes you more than five seconds to figure out the answers to those three questions then you need to make changes. Keep making changes until it passes the five second test.

9. Eliminate Navigation to Keep Visitors Glued to Your Landing Page

A menu and easy navigation is a very important part of a successful website, but a landing page is different. You are specifically driving traffic to that page, so you want to keep the user focused on the specific landing page by eliminating the menu navigation. Like mentioned above, you need your visitors to understand the landing page offer and the benefit within five seconds. If they have a navigation menu to distract them it can result in them losing focus.

10. Your Landing Page Must be Responsive

Your goal is to generate leads, conversions, and sales, regardless of what kind of device your visitor is using. If your website is responsive and easy to navigate on all devices it will greatly increase your conversion rates. mobile and tablet users are increasing daily, so make sure your landing page can convert users on all types of devices.

11. Thank You Page and Confirmation Email

Once a visitor completes your offer make sure that they are sent to a thank you page that provides them with further instructions. If your email list requires them to opt in make sure that you tell them to check their email and confirm the email. If they will be sent an email with download instructions for the offer make sure that they know that as well. Along with a detailed thank you page make sure that you set up and autoresponder email message that thanks them for taking advantage of your offer. Little things like this will help you to maintain a strong list and not lose subscribers.

Your landing page is such an important online marketing tool, so make sure that you take advantage of this little checklist of optimization tips. If you would like more optimization tips for your website make sure you check out our definitive on-page optimization guide and let us know if we can help you improve your online marketing campaign in any way.