How to Optimize Your Landing Page in 10 Simple Steps

Digital marketing is an essential part of brand promotion.

It involves various methods, such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, influencer marketing, paid campaigns, and so on. All these efforts have one common goal – driving new customers. 

To reach the objective, you should lead all your prospects to the single page designed to convert. It will be your landing page. In a nutshell, it’s a web page built for the specific purpose of your marketing campaign. An effective landing page shows how the business solves a customer’s problem and encourages them to act. However, not every landing page drives significant results. According to Unbounce research, the average landing page conversion rate is 4.02%. 

You should understand that creating a fancy design isn’t the key to success. Landing page optimization is a process that requires understanding your audience’s needs, identifying your goals, testing, and more. If you don’t take these steps, you’ll most likely waste your budget.

So, what are the crucial steps of successful landing page optimization? In this post, you’ll discover how to optimize your landing page in ten simple steps.  

Before you start optimizing your landing page, it’s worth identifying what this process means and why you need it. 

The optimization process requires improving elements in your landing page builder to increase conversions. Before you start, you should collect and process the necessary information. It involves surveying your audience, analyzing your previous campaigns, and so on. When the landing page is ready, you should keep tracking the results to modify it if necessary.

Optimizing your landing page correctly can help you achieve the highest possible conversion rate from the prospects that click through it.

Step 1: Define your goals

What the aim of your campaign is will be the most important question you ask yourself before creating your landing page. The answer will influence your further steps. Concentrate on one particular goal. When the landing page provides several calls to action (CTAs) it splits the focus and results in poor conversions.

Here are some of the most common goals to choose from:

Generate sales

Sales processes include different stages, so you may need a different approach for each case. For instance, if a visitor faces your SEO tool for the first time, your CTA should encourage them to request a demo or try it for free. So, when you want to drive sales with your landing page, you should rarely use direct “buy now” CTA. Most often marketers call for the following actions:

• Request a demo
• Call back
• Try free
• Set an appointment 

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Nurture relationships with your audience

Building brand credibility is crucial for marketing. Before you can sell your product, you should show your audience you’re an expert. To do this, some brands invest in paid campaigns to promote some educational events, free e-books, or other related content.

 

Get more subscribers

If you want to encourage people to sign up for your newsletters, your landing page doesn’t require a long description. There should be a minimum distraction, minimalistic design, and a concise CTA.  

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Step 2: Identify your target audience

You should be aware of which people will be clicking through your landing page. Having a pen portrait of your prospect will help you understand what your landing page should contain. When you identify your target audience, you can think of the following aspects: the landing page design; the way you’ll describe your product; your approach and tone; and the type of CTA.

In case you haven’t created a pen portrait yet, start with Google Analytics. With this tool, you can analyze your website audience. Even though you may have had an idea of who your typical customer is, you may be surprised by new data. Go to the Audience > Demographics. This report shows your visitors’ age, gender, language, and location.  

Still, this information might seem pretty vague. If you have a sales department, talk to their team to learn more. As they communicate with your prospects every day, the sales team will provide you with critical data on their preferences, problems they want to solve, business types, and so on.

Step 3: Choose the right keywords

This step is crucial if you want your ads to show up for relevant and profitable queries. Be careful with the words you’re bidding on. Here’s the example of the ad ranking for “buy iPhone X.”  

The landing page doesn’t look to be relevant either. 

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Thus, this campaign will drive poor conversions (as it is not targeted).

Select keywords that fit your goals to drive significant results. First of all, consider user intent. If your landing page offers the trial version of your tool, it shouldn’t rank for how to and what is queries (which are informational).

Secondly, try long-tail keywords consisting of three or more words. They are highly profitable as they are very specific to what you’re selling. When users search for long-form queries, it’s most likely they’re looking exactly for what they’re going to interact with (buy, order, ask for advice, etc.).

Step 4: Check your competition

Once you’ve collected the words you’ll bid on, check what results are showing up for these keywords. It may happen that some keywords fit several topics, and you’d better choose something more specific. 

Moreover, it’s worth to analyze your competition to discover their strengths and weaknesses. It’ll let you see the mistakes you could avoid and come up with ideas you could use to improve your strategy. For example, here’s one of the results that came up when searching for “flowers in Florida.” Looking at the ad, I decided that denoting such competitive advantage as 24/7 customer service and showing the prices would be a good idea for my business as well.  

Click through your competitors’ landing pages to see what they offer. Do they provide special prices or free courses? Maybe you should as well.

Step 5: Make sure your landing page content is relevant to the ad

Your ad should form the right expectations of what the user will see on the landing page.

Trying to attract visitors with a catchy, false click-through promise will cause undesirable consequences. Even if users click through your page, most of them won’t convert. People will return to the search results if they are discouraged with what they see on your landing page. 

In order to prevent disconnect between your click-through rate and conversions, your ad should contain a clear and accurate description of your landing page content.

Step 6: Provide a clear offer

Remember that the vast majority of your visitors have never faced your brand before. So, make your offer as clear as possible. Start from a simple and straightforward headline. Keep it short and catchy as it’s the first thing your visitor will see.

Show your prospects how they will benefit if they choose you. Don’t be vague telling about your expertise and how long you’ve been on the market. List the specific problems you can solve. Add a FAQs section if your subject is complicated.  

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Step 7: Add urgency

Have you ever left the landing page thinking you’ll return later? Probably. But did you return? Probably not. Marketers use scarcity techniques prevent prospects from going without action. Show your visitors they’ll miss a great opportunity if they wait.

To add some urgency to your offer, place a countdown timer on your landing page. A timer denotes a chance of missing a great opportunity and encourages an individual to take action. 

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Step 8: Follow basic CTA rules

Call to action buttons are the main aspect of your landing page. Without them, there’s no sense in the whole optimization process. Here are the best practices you should follow when creating your CTA: 

Make your CTA easily accessible

Many brands are now producing long landing pages. It lets them fully describe their offer and provides the audience with striking examples. However, it’s crucial to repeat your CTA in this case. It’ll help you reinforce your purpose.

Try contrasting colors

Ensure your CTA button doesn’t blend in with the page background. It should be the second thing after your headline that strikes the user’s eye. What’s better than a bright orange CTA on a white background? Excellent readability, excellent visibility.

Provide large and legible text

The button text should be large enough to read easily. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be too large, as it often scares prospects.

Be descriptive

Don’t just write START, ORDER, and other “command” words. To improve your CTA click-through rate, try to be descriptive and appealing. For example, if you offer discounts, mention it in your CTA and write “Buy for $20” to be clear and concise.

Step 9: Show proof via testimonials/reviews

People always want to know the experiences your previous customers have had. They trust them more than your own descriptions. Add testimonials that will contribute to your brand’s credibility. Additionally, a reviews section will help you convert indecisive users.  

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As people rarely want to spend their time writing testimonials, encourage them to give their feedback for discounts or other benefits.

Step 10: Check for technical issues

Your visitors won’t even see your perfectly optimized landing page if it doesn’t respond correctly because of technical issues. 

How long does it take for your page to get loaded? Most users won’t wait long. If the loading time is more than a few seconds, you should fix the lag ASAP.

Page speed isn’t the only technical issue you should check. To conduct a comprehensive technical analysis, you can try the new Serpstat Page Audit feature. This step will help you ensure that nothing will prevent your landing page from driving conversions.  

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Keys to optimizing your landing page

All of these steps will become an excellent kickstart for your business. Follow them, evaluate your results, and keep testing. As there’s no one size fits all decision for landing page optimization, you should track how your audience interacts with it to modify your landing page key elements.

Want to learn more about landing pages and how to create the best one for your site? Make sure to also check out ways to rank on page one by using strong on-page SEO!