written by
Syed Balkhi

SEO for Landing Pages: How to Effectively Rank on SERPs

Content Marketing SEO 9 min read

Landing pages generally engage the bottom-funnel target audience. The core objective of designing these pages is to showcase your solutions and convince the intended audience to try them out.

However, you’re not the only one participating in the race. You compete with many players in your respective industry.

Some may resort to PPC advertising to gain an edge. However, there’s a more efficient and cost-effective way to outrank your competition and drive higher conversion rates through your pages.

The key to success is to optimize your landing pages to rank higher on SERPs for the targeted keywords and enhance your visibility. Search engines are likely to recommend SEO-focused landing pages in response to relevant searchers’ queries, enabling you to generate traction organically.

This article, hence, discusses search engine optimization for landing pages and guides you on how to rank on SERPs effectively.

Why SEO for Landing Pages is Important

Landing page SEO encompasses the process of optimizing your pages on respective primary keywords and ensuring that they offer a seamless experience to your visitors.

Search engines act as initiators for 93% of online experiences. People will not stumble upon your pages on their own but through search queries. They are more likely to explore search engines for relevant information and find viable solutions to their problems.

Top Ranked Landing Pages for Online Meeting Planner Search Query
Top Ranked Landing Pages for Online Meeting Planner Search Query

The best course of action is to optimize your landing pages using the main keywords encompassing search queries and consider different ranking factors to improve your pages’ SEO performance.

Leveraging best SEO practices increases the chances for your landing pages to appear among the top search engine recommendations in response to relevant search queries.

A well-thought-out landing page content will offer a seamless experience to your visitors and facilitate their access to relevant information, which amplifies an average landing page’s capability to generate quality leads in the long run.

How to Improve SEO for Landing Pages

No matter the industry, you come across multiple landing pages that target the same primary and secondary keywords. They all strive to be at the top and engage the intended audience.

To create great landing pages that stand out in terms of search engine performance, you should consider a few things.

Here’s how you can improve your SEO and acknowledge better landing page visibility.

1. Leveraging Relevant Keywords

Keyword research powers the process of creating a highly competitive landing page.

You explore relevant search queries that are capable of driving traffic and represent low search engine ranking difficulty.

Furthermore, the intent of the keywords you target also matters. A searcher’s intent reflects their goals, telling you what a user intends to do with the information accessed in response to a particular search query. This could be researching relevant information about a specific product, checking reviews from existing customers, or looking to purchase it.

For landing pages, you should focus on targeting keywords with transactional intent, as they help you attract visitors who are likely to convert. You can leverage keyword planner solutions, such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and LowFruits, to conduct such research.

Semrush: a keyword planner tool
Semrush: a keyword planner tool

Many people make the common mistake of not optimizing their landing pages using the focus keyword, which leads to poor search engine performance.

A focus keyword encompasses the main search query that you want your particular landing page to rank on. For your page to perform well, it should contain information around the focus keyword and cover relevant topics.

Include related keywords to your visitors’ search queries in the body text of your landing pages based on your research. Furthermore, adding the focus keyword in your landing page URL, title tag, meta description, headings, and subheadings may contribute to SEO value.

2. Crafting Quality Content

The quality of the content you publish on your landing pages plays a critical role in their search engine performance. People explore search engines to find fitting solutions to their problems.

The information you publish should cater to the pain points of the intended audience and help them find viable solutions. A landing page addressing its audience’s concerns outshines others it competes with. It enables you to cultivate trust and engage your target audience.

Search engines readily recommend content tailored to users’ needs or preferences. So, publishing quality content helps you generate more traction organically.

3. Optimizing Visual Content

Leveraging visual content is one of the most effective ways to engage visitors. Images help you convey your message more easily than text. They make complex information easy to present and comprehend.

So, it’s safe to say that leveraging visual content enhances the user experience you offer through your platform.

Using visuals in landing pages Source
Using visuals in landing pages Source

Strategic use of visual content can help you improve your search engine presence and drive more traction organically. You just need to ensure your images are optimized following current SEO best practices.

Use relevant keywords to optimize alt text for your images. It’s also best to ensure that your images don’t compromise the user experience.

Heavy images may significantly increase the load time of your pages. Hence, you must be careful about the size of the visual content you use.

4. Offering Seamless Navigation

You should make it easier for your visitors to explore relevant information through your landing pages. Avoid using complex terms and design your pages in a way that offers easy information access.

If you lack coding expertise, leveraging landing page builders, such as SeedProd, Elementor, and Beaver Builder, is ideal for structuring your pages wisely. Google is more likely to recommend well-structured landing pages that offer a hassle-free information navigation experience to visitors.

So, you should never overwhelm your visitors with a busy page. Just give them what they came for.

5. Adding a Clear Call to Action

You create landing pages to engage an audience with a transactional intent. These visitors are likely ready to make a buying decision. All they need is the right push.

Hence, you should add a clear call to action to your pages. It should be easy to comprehend and guide visitors on what comes next.

Landing page CTA example Source
Landing page CTA example Source

When designing your call to action, make sure that it’s eye-catching. Your CTA button should stand out. However, you should refrain from picking an odd shape. It’s safe to go with a rectangle or the one that aligns with your page’s theme.

Carefully select the color of your CTA button. Leveraging the concepts of psychology may help. For example, if you want to create a sense of urgency, you should go with red, but consider green if you want to cultivate trust. Just make sure that the color you pick aligns with your brand’s style guide.

You can use the same font style as your body text or choose a different one to grab the attention of your visitors. The size of your CTA should make it noticeable and easy to read. However, it should not be too big.

You should also consider personalizing your CTA, as it converts 42% more visitors compared to bland or generic ones.

Generic vs personalized call to action button Source

Lastly, the placement of your call to action is very important. Ideally, you should place it above the fold, minimizing page scrolling.

However, if you think that your CTA will give you better results at the end of the page, you can go with that option.

Adding a call to action multiple times throughout the page may increase your chances of adding quality leads to your sales funnel. However, it’s best to do it in moderation.

6. Reducing Page Load Time

Landing pages that take ages to load struggle to engage the intended audience and likely grapple with poor search engine performance.

People don’t like to wait long to access the required information. If your pages have a high load time, your visitors will leave and likely never return.

Landing page load time speed statistic Source

The load time of your pages even has a critical impact on your ability to convert. A 1-second delay may lead to a 7% drop in conversions. So, catering to the load time issue of your pages should be a top priority for you.

7. Structuring Internal Links

Your internal linking structure complements the search engine performance of your landing pages and helps grow your online visibility.

Your internal linking structure helps search engine crawlers navigate your pages with ease. Moreover, it helps visitors effortlessly access required information and learn more about preferred topics.

As a result, your landing pages may see an overall boost in their search engine rankings with respect to targeted keywords. Strategically placed internal links also help keep visitors engaged and minimize the likelihood of them exiting the site.

However, you should be careful when adding links to your pages. Overdoing it may cause more harm than good.

8. Ensuring Device Compatibility

Ensure that your website’s landing pages offer a seamless experience on all leading devices and browsers.

A common mistake many make is that they only optimize their websites for desktops, while people also explore your pages on mobile devices. So, leaving them unoptimized may lead to poor search engine performance.

Leading search engines, especially Google, leverage mobile-first indexing when it comes to determining rankings for your pages. It means that mobile friendly landing pages that offer an enhanced user experience trump the ones optimized for desktops only.

Ideally, you should consider your visitor’s device and browser preferences to design your pages accordingly.

9. Monitoring Your Performance

Search engines periodically update their algorithms, which affect the rankings of your pages. Hence, SEO strategies that worked for you in the past may no longer be relevant with time. Furthermore, the keywords you target may also lose their relevance due to changing market trends and consumer preferences.

Therefore, it’s important to monitor the performance of your pages and identify the room for improvement. This enables you to make the necessary changes to your pages preemptively, which makes it easier for you to maintain your ranking and stay ahead of the curve.

Grab your website’s free SEO analysis today. Easily monitor your website's SEO performance, gain valuable insights, and receive actionable recommendations to increase your traffic.

Wrapping Up

If you want to improve the SEO for the landing pages of your website, the recommendations in this article may help. We provided you with useful recommendations that will guide you on how to effectively rank on SERPs and stand out from other players in your industry.

Design your pages tailored to the preferences of the intended audience and help your visitors seek answers to their questions. It’s all about offering an enhanced user experience to the visitors of your site and facilitating their access to helpful content.

Moreover, we suggest you track the performance of your pages from time to time. It complements your marketing plan because your target audience’s interests and SEO best practices constantly change.

Landing Pages SEO ROI