Google constantly updates its algorithm. This year alone, they’ve announced 12 significant updates.
But, of course, it doesn’t include the hundreds of minor updates Google has made to its search engine.
Could these updates affect the performance of your landing pages? Absolutely.
Adjusting to these constant changes is about more than just optimizing your content for the SERPs.
On December 15, I moderated a sponsored webinar presented by Mordy Oberstein, Head of Communications at Semrush.
Oberstein showed how to improve the SEO of your landing pages and increase conversions with a set of data-backed tips you can put into practice today.
Want more of the details, data, and tips from Oberstein’s presentation? Here is a quick recap of the webinar.
How Landing Pages & SEO Have Changed
People are more tech aware and skeptical now, as observed with the increase in data privacy and security searches in recent years.
Similarly, Google is becoming more aware and skeptical of the content coming out.
People and search engines are looking for a good experience with real information.
However, ranking your landing pages isn’t just about the information contained on a single page.
It’s important to think about how your landing pages reflect and connect to your website, overall.
[See The Data: Site Rankings Vs. Page Rankings] Instantly access this webinar →
The Ability To Rank Landing Pages Depends On The Site Overall
It’s not just about the landing pages. John Mueller has talked about how quality applies to the entire site many times.
Image Source: SemrushIt’s clear that Google wants to make sure that you and your visitors have an excellent site experience.
The Problem With Landing Pages: Lack Of Information & Full-Site Best Practices
As a marketer, it’s natural to look at landing pages from a conversion standpoint.
Additionally, many still think of landing pages as independent entities or orphan pages, that they’re not part of a bigger site.
That’s why the things that you usually do, or wouldn’t on your blog or product pages, you’re happy to do on landing pages.
It’s time to change that mindset.
[Solve Your Landing Page Problems] Instantly access this webinar →
The Future Of Landing Pages: Informative, Data-Driven, Consistent
Remember — users are not looking for conversions. They come to landing pages for information.
Information leads to conversions.
If your users don’t get that information first, they won’t convert.
Focus more on informing the user instead of making a sale.
In addition to proactively answering your user’s questions, brand consistency and good SEO practices will become more important.
Landing pages are part of a bigger site. Thinking about carrying your full website’s expertise, authority, and trust over to your landing pages is key.
How To Make A Landing Page Informative
Google can tell when you’re trying to sell instead of inform visitors — this will affect your rankings.
If you’re using product reviews, make sure there’s no push to sell something.
If you want to get more sign-ups for a newsletter, inform them — make sure you let visitors know what kind of content they’ll get when they sign up.
[Make Your Landing Pages More Informative Now] Instantly access this webinar →
How Branding & SEO Work Together
Brand marketing and site perception are a part of SEO — that’s the mindset you need to adopt if you want to rank better on landing pages.
Make sure ads aren’t overshadowing your authoritative content, and be sure your brand’s content matches your user’s needs and intent.
Research User Intent & Incorporate Into Your Landing Page
When creating helpful, informative content for your landing pages, Semrush recommends starting with empathy. Then, begin your keyword research.
To make informative content that connects to your user and helps them decide to convert, understand:
- Where are your users coming from?
- What needs to happen for them?
- What content is going to be helpful to them?
- Would they trust this article?
- Would they buy these products?
Build that into your landing page’s perception, but don’t stop there.
Look at how your site is perceived because your content is your brand, landing pages included.
[How Does Perception Affect Landing Page Rankings?] Get instant access to the full webinar→
Discover: Why Does Google Rank One Page Over Another?
Usability is going to be a big differentiating factor here. The future of optimization is experience and usability.
- How digestible is the information for the user?
- Are you giving information in the best way possible?
- Is it formatted in a way that makes sense for the user?
The more small business sites I see, the fewer I see with technical SEO issues, and the more the issues lie with the content (stale, duplicated across multiple sites, incorrect, low-quality, etc). CMSs tend to get most technical things right (or “right enough”) nowadays.
— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) February 15, 2021
More Data-Backed Tips & Insights For Better Landing Page Rankings
Semrush learned valuable lessons about landing page SEO by analyzing more than 20,000 landing page URLs and home page ranking patterns.
[Find Out What The Data Revealed] Get instant access to the entire webinar→
Key Takeaways
- Don’t orphan your landing pages. Connect them with the rest of your site as much as possible.
- Offer helpful and specific content, not just “sales content.” Google is getting better at understanding intent.
- When creating content for landing pages, focus on empathy before keywords.
- Understand how visitors and Google perceive your site and content.
- Don’t go overboard when pushing the conversion.
- Usability will differentiate your content.
[Slides] Landing Page SEO Best Practices & Tips For Success
Here is the presentation:
Join Us for Our Next Webinar!
How We Built 600+ Links in 30 Days & You Can, Too
Learn how to optimize your landing pages and make better use of the traffic you already get. Join our upcoming webinar on Wednesday, Dec 15 at 2 p.m. ET, and learn how to rank better on Google SERPs.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal