Landing Pages Increase Conversions

What is a Conversion?

Conversions are what website owners are want. Different websites have different purposes. Each website owner will consider a success to occur when a visitor takes a desired action. This is called a conversion.

For information sites a conversion might be a visitor signing up for a newsletter by providing an E-mail address. For e-Commerce sites a conversion is probably a sale, but could also be registering for a product update. Each type of site will have its own distinct conversion that is desired.

Tracking these conversions is essential to truly understanding the productivity of websites. We won't get into conversion tracking in this article. However, please note that this is a critical aspect of truly understanding the success of any website.

Buying Signs

My background is sales and sales management. In classes that I teach I am often asked about the buying signs of a potential customer, what they are and how to look for them.

Quite often these buying signs are presented to the salesperson in the form of a question. "Does this come in blue?" "Can I take this home today?" For larger items you might hear, "Do you offer a delivery service?" Each of these questions assumes the sale and moves beyond the close stage.

Internet Buying Signs

Internet sales also have buying signs. They differ on the type of site you have but they do exist. You simply need to listen to your customers/visitors to find out what they are.

For information sites, they may be related to your blog or newsletter. "How do I get your newsletter?" "Is your newsletter weekly?" "How do I sign up for your blog?"

For e-Commerce sites you might here, "Do you offer free shipping?" Do you have anything for under $50?" "I am a size XL. Do you have shirts in my size?"

All of these questions assume the sale and move beyond the close. In the mind of the buyer, they are mostly sold. A large part of the work is done. You just need to get them to your site and give them the answers to their questions.

How do you get them to your site? By providing them landing pages that are optimized to answer their questions.

Landing Pages are not Home Pages

You only have one home page per site. This is the page that is displayed when the main URL is entered. Landing pages are totally separate pages, sometimes they are included in the site navigation but often times they are only accessible by direct entry of their specific URL.

A lot of sites have a Frequently Asked Question page or section. This is a great source for keyword phrases for landing pages. If you have a popular FAQ that gets a lot of traffic. You probably have a great opportunity to create a very popular landing page.

Other sources for suggestions for landing pages might be your AdWords reports, Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools if you are using any of these services. They key here is to know what your visitors/customers are looking for and create optimized landing pages to capitalize on these phrases.

Keyword Phrases Hold the Key to Landing Page Success

In the examples used above we used buyer's questions to illustrate our point. Take these questions and create optimized landing pages to answer the questions.

"Do you offer free shipping?" Create a landing page that is optimized to show that you offer free shipping. Optimize the answer in the way your visitor/customer will ask the question. If you are selling golf shirts you would create a landing page for "Golf Shirts Free Shipping"

"Do you have anything under $50?" If you are selling golf shirts you would create an optimized landing page for "Golf Shirts Under $50"

"I am an XL. Do you have anything in my size?" Using our golf shirt example again you would create a optimized landing page for "XL Golf Shirts".

One very important point to note is that by creating these 3 landing pages you are also greatly enhancing your status with the search engines. Not only are you providing them with a more accurate search result for their organic search you are also optimizing your entire site and your home page to rank better for your main keyword. In this case the keyword "Golf Shirt" is enhanced by the addition of the the extra landing pages, each optimized for a keyword phrase including the words "Golf Shirt".

Landing Pages Bring Qualified Visitors

Pick keyword phrases that answer their questions and bring in qualified visitors and customers. If someone is looking for a golf shirt under $50 you want them to find you. With an optimized landing page they will certainly have a better chance of seeing your site. Once they do and they click on your link you will now have a much better qualified visitor than if you were to rank well just for "golf shirts" as a whole.

Besides, there are over 2,580,000 results for "golf shirts" on Google tonight. There are only 122,000 results for "golf shirts under $50". There are only 172,000 returns for "golf shirts free shipping" and 153,00 for "xl golf shirts". So, where do you think you have a better chance of showing up in the results?

Does this Actually Work?

Three weeks ago I optimized landing pages for some keyword phrases for a new site of ours. This site did not rank in the top 100 for 2 of the keyword phrases that I wanted to target. (If you are not in the top 30 you probably will never be seen by someone searching for their answer.)

I optimized a single page for each of the 2 phrases that I wanted to target. I used articles taken from free article directories to create the pages. I included product images and links to add content. The pages had optimized page titles, headings and I used capitalization to highlight the keyword phrases. Once completed I submitted a new sitemap to Google.

Two weeks later I check Google and found that our site now ranked #11 for one of the phrases and # 9 for the other. Our Google Analytics tool also showed an increase in traffic because of these keyword phrases, our landing pages were receiving good traffic and our largest sale this year occurred because of these efforts.

Is this Worth the Effort? Absolutely.

Take your site beyond a simple FAQ page. Use your visitor's questions to find the keyword phrases to optimize new landing pages. Use these pages to bring targeted and qualified visitors to your site. Once their, your conversions will increase along with your profits.

Optimized landing pages have long been a piece of the SEO puzzle many people forget. Nathan Lewis has used them to elevate the search engine rankings for sites such as: CJ Gift Baskets [http://cjgiftbaskets.com], CJ Picnic Baskets and CJ Outdoor World.