• Think Of Each Page On Your Site As A Landing Page •
• Provide Your Visitors With The Information They Were Hoping To Find •

In a previous post about how to write compelling copy I talk about keeping it foremost in your mind that whatever you are writing needs to provide the information the visitor was hoping to find.

In other words, they typed in a search term; your SERP listing caught their eye; and click … they were carried onto the page showing up on the SERP.   Now, that content should be of great interest to your new visitor. The content should provide the information they were hoping to find about your services or products.

Side note: Because I know your content is always keyword focused (you have been following what I teach, right? ), and because you always do a great job optimizing your Title tag and Description meta tag, that is why the visitor found you via their search efforts.

Today I just want to drum home the thought that we all should strive to write quality, informative content that sticks to the keyword phrase we have targeted to that specific page.

The Only Thing Separating Your SERP Listing From Your Competitors’ Is …

… a compelling Title tag and Description meta tag!  The SERP listing is your first stab at attempting to attract the attention of your ideal buying audience! If you’ve taken your time to write an interesting and to-the-point SERP listing you’ve got a very good chance you’ll get the click.

Once you’ve gotten that visitor’s trust (you got the click), then you have got to make darn sure the content on the page that visitor lands on is FOCUSED to the information the SERP listing provided them.

That visitor should immediately recognize upon landing on your page that “Yup! this is exactly the information I was looking for!”  If this is the case, then it’s a win-win for everyone.

Remember … in almost all instances, treat each and every page on your website as a landing page.  Make sure your well written SERP listing is in total agreement with the information the visitor will find on the corresponding page.

If you do this with every new page you write, you will be miles ahead from almost all of your online competition.

Landing Pages — Their Importance To Your Ad Campaigns
Grab Your Prospect’s Attention & Keep Them On Your Webpage

Landing pages.  Very important web pages for your internet marketing website.  Why?  Because these pages serve as clear and concise pieces of “call to action” information for your website visitors.  Landing pages are responsible for helping your visitor decide to engage an initial conversation with you, so they can investigate a specific product, or service, or free offer, etc. that you are promoting.

It is a proven fact that your website has a large influence over prospective clients and customers in deciding if they want to make the next step and learn more from you.  A landing page is a vehicle that gives specific information on one topic to your prospect.

However, more times than not, most of the internet marketing websites that I have visited or been hired to help improve, have poorly focused landing pages.  The content is written in a manner that causes the visitor to end up either overwhelmed with too much non-specific information, or deciding to leave the website because they couldn’t find what they were hoping to find.

Write A Landing Page That’s Focused And Specific To Only One “Call To Action”

Without an effective landing page for each and every ad campaign you undertake, you’re wasting money and customers.  As examples, whether you’re trying to build up your mailing list by offering a free download or promoting a special “Get to Know Us” discount on your professional services, the bottom line is all the same.  You want positive results.  You want prospects moving forward in their decision making process, not clicking off your internet marketing website.

So, while your ad, special offer, etc. attracts your prospect’s interest, the landing page is supposed to pick up where the ad leaves off.  It should lead the prospect to complete the desired transaction .  The time it will take you to write clear, concise and compelling text for a landing page is an investment in success.  There’s no getting around this fact.

Don’t think that landing pages are only limited to sales pages.  They also include pages designed to get visitors to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter or to leave contact information on a lead generation page.  A/B split-testing can also be employed to determine usability, to refine elements of a home page, or to develop a navigation system that visitors can understand.

Create A Great Landing Page To Capture Your Prospect’s Attention

• Stick to One Theme, One Offer, One Message:  The tendency of most internet marketers is to say “Hey, I got them to my website, why don’t I give them information on all of my different services, or tell them about all the clients I’ve serviced in the past, or I think I ought to create links to all my other web pages,” and on and on …

Your landing page should have one specific action that you want the prospect to take.  To register for an event, complete an information request form, download a whitepaper, etc.  Distracting prospects with other information or additional offers will drastically reduce the number of leads you are able to capture.

• Create a Clear Call to Action:  Do not hide the call to action at the bottom of the page, making the prospect scroll down to get to it.  The action you want them to take should be the main focus of the page.  Create a clickable button beginning with the action word corresponding to what you want them to do – register, contact, download, buy, etc.

Prominently place this button above the fold on the page as well as in various places as they scroll down.   The call to action button should be visible at all times as the prospect scrolls down the page.

• Capture Your Prospect’s Information!  Regardless of the offer, create a response device to capture the prospect’s information.  For instance, if you are offering a free downloadable eBook, also create a short form they must complete before they can proceed with the download.  If the prospect is interested in what you have to offer they will be willing to exchange a small amount of information about themselves.

Additionally, they are pre-qualifying themselves as interested prospects giving you legitimate reason to follow up.  Do not ignore this valuable marketing step.  Depending upon your offer, it might be something as simple as a “Thank You” email with a link that points back to your website.  Or your follow-up might be a once a week for seven weeks email course.  

I use and recommend Get Response for a very affordable and pretty easy to use autoresponder email system that allows anyone to easily capture their prospects information and also set up all different sorts of email campaigns.  A serious internet marketer cannot be without an autoresponder system!

• Match Your Ad Campaign with Your Website Copy: Make sure the look and feel of your landing page is consistent with the marketing piece that drives the prospect to it. If possible, use the same images, design elements, and colors. Repeat the copy and offer. This helps to build credibility, reinforce your message and the benefits, and increase awareness and conversions by reassuring the prospect that they are indeed in the right place.

• Keep Your Prospect on Your Landing Page: Keep navigation and links to a bare minimum if at all possible. Once they’re on your landing page, the last thing you want a prospect to do is click out to another page on your website without completing the desired action.

To help curtail this, simply strip the page of main navigation and keep the amount of links to a minimum. Only links directly relevant to your offer should be included. If you do offer the option of directing them off your landing page, allow the link to open up another browser window. Keep that landing page open!

To give you a very good example of a well written landing page that follows all the criteria I’ve listed here, please go and take a look at one of my landing pages that focuses on an eBook I wrote and am promoting.   I think you’ll see that I do practice what I teach :)  The Hypertufa How-To Manual

Search Engine Optimization Considerations For A Landing Page

As a final note I must touch upon the SEO strategy for a landing page. Simply stated, definitely keep your landing page keyword focused and written with compelling copy. Make your visitors and the spiders happy.

However, there are many times when a landing page is a temporary situation, such as when you are offering “something” for a very short period of time and there would be absolutely no way search engine rankings would materialize in that limited time frame. In this situation, still utilize the targeted keywords throughout your copy and stick to sound content writing principles. Why not? It just makes good sense.