Whatever business you're in – having key product/service website pages highly ranked on Google is a game changer – both in terms of sales conversions and brand awareness.These type of pages are commonly described as "landing pages". Particularly useful for Pay Per Click Advertising and by using good SEO practices they will create great natural listing results in Google.
Unlike the home page, landing pages have a specific goal – the design and content is tailor made to attract a specific audience, who then purchase a specific product or trigger another sales action. These web pages provide exactly what the internet user has searched for. The content is focused on a few select key words and key phrases.
In this article we wanted to highlight some of the aspects you should consider when creating landing pages for your website. This is not an exact science as every target audience is different – so apply these general rules and it will give you a great starting point to work from.
Which keywords to choose for each page?
Knowing which key words and key phrases are best for each landing page requires research. You can use an SEO specialist or you can do the groundwork yourself – as some data is available for free. First make a list of what you think people would search for – include spelling errors. Then do some analysis using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Trends. I found this great blog which explains in more detail - https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht
Writing metadata for each page
Metadata is not something that web users can see on a webpage, but they can see them in search results. Search engines use metadata to decide when to show your content in search results depending on the search term input by the web user.
What does metadata look like?
In search results, titles tags and meta descriptions look like this:
You should work through your website to ensure that all pages have a unique title tag and meta description. When working on an existing website you can prioritise this somewhat intimidating task by first working on pages with high search value and high traffic and pages with no metadata at all. When adding new pages, you should make it a habit to add unique metadata before publishing the page.
How much text should I write?
A really juicy landing page should include about 600 – 700 words minimum. Really focus on quality content – The text should be honest, relevant, keyword rich – but sensibly done.
Avoid duplicate content
Having multiple landing pages with potentially similar keywords means you maybe tempted to copy some paragraphs of text from one to the other. This will be flagged up and marked down by Google – so do take the time to rewrite all your page text – it is worth the effort.
P.s. Avoid borrowing content from other websites.
A mobile friendly user experience
As a web design team we now design mobile up – which basically means that we consider mobile view above all others. Ensuring best practice for all platforms.
Google will take into consideration how your site performs in mobile view. So designers will consider page loading speed, navigation, usability, content layout and social media sharing opportunity.
Websites which reflow content to suit different screen sizes are called “Responsive”.
Looking professional
Once a potential client has found your site – they need to know that the company they have found is not only professional but trustworthy, experienced, reputable and provides the place to purchase the item or find out more (especially if your business is service based).
So get professional designers (like us :-) to help make the web page sing – both in terms of product placement, hierarchy of information and user interaction triggers. The use of effective imagery is important as well as button colours and placement.
Slow burn
It can take time to see the results of your labour where SEO is concerned, for some websites it can take six months, even two years to rank high in search results for a specific keyword or phrase. Some improvements in your website’s SEO however can have an immediate positive impact. The result depends on the website, the available improvements to make on it and of course your competition and what they are doing with their SEO.
There is also the Google factor, Google are an entity of their own and can release new rules and algorithms whenever they see fit. We would point out here that Google’s ethos is to provide the best user experience to users of their search engine, so there is every reason to try to work within Google rules to encourage relevant, convertible traffic to your website instead of users that don’t want to be there and you wouldn’t ever be able to convert.
The more websites and pages that your website is competing against, the longer it takes to get results.
There are usually some easy wins and quick fixes that you can work on to get results soon whilst you are also working on the long-term strategy. These will vary from one website to another and a good SEO company will suggest a full site and brand assessment to help you to plan your strategy.
Google analytics and algorithms – review and revise – learn
Website promotion is a constant learning experience which evolves and grows over time. The statistics Google Analytics provides will help you review and revise the content and design to get the best results
To learn a bit more about Google Algorithms this blog quite useful - https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-ultimate-google-algorithm-cheat-sheet/
To speak direct to a designer today call us on 0370 334 1598 or email studio@thenewfat.co.uk.
ADDITIONAL READING:
Coffee break quick read: Overview of The New Fat's best design projects of 2018
Find out more about our April social media brand up design offer click here.
Have a read of our latest case study all about the website we designed for The Old Diorama Arts Centre.
