There are probably a dozen distinct actions you can take to get people to visit a landing page, but the foremost of these is to be found at the top of the major search engine results pages (SERPs). You probably already know that Google is the “gold standard” when it comes to being found on the internet and that being listed on the first few pages of Google and the other SERPs is key. You may also know that the written content of your page is what determines where you stand in the rankings.
Do you know that there are two paths to take get to the top of the listings? But, unlike the famous poem by Robert Frost where there is an option to go in only one of two traveled ways, both paths can be taken.
Your basic landing page page strategy should start with an ongoing organic search engine optimization (SEO) program. This aproach can take months to fully develop and produce the traffic, and then the conversions, you expect. Organic SEO basically relies on web crawlers examining your site and comparing its relevant text content to other sites’ relevant content. Search engines want to provide searchers with the most relevant sites based on the keyword phrase used by the searcher. Your site will be re-evaluated periodically by the web crawlers from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines and their lists adjusted accordingly, to bring their searchers what they consider the best results. While you can control your website content and work to improve it for the search engines, you don’t have much control over what they do. If you have the time to devote to this facet of your business the internet is full of resources to help. If you want to devote your time to your own business, contact Comstar to do the heavy lifting for you.
Of course, there is no “road less traveled” in internet marketing, so you may want to add a pay-per-click (PPC) Google Adwords campaign. A PPC ad can get to the first page of Google at once by simply outbidding your competition, withe more control over your link’s visibility. The higher the amount you bid per click, the higher your listing will show on the SERP. There is some level of skill involved in managing a PPC campaign to achieve the desired result without spending too much of your budget. A well-managed program will employ a defined budget, well-written ads, a method for tracking the results, and a plan for improvement, such as A/B ad testing. This is where each visitor is presented one of two alternating ads and the clicks are measured and compared over a time period to determine the better performing ad. Expect to pay a fee for management of a PPC campaign and to pay Google for the clicks, based on your budget.
A landing page is a great thing to feature relentlessly in social media. Links from Facebook, blogs and other social media that you author or comment on can all be helpful in attracting focused traffic to your landing page. And besides, search engines like links to your site, so do all you can to build those incoming links and you’ll be improving your SEO results, too.
Like any other marketing effort, your success depends on how well you test and measure the results of what you do. More in my next post about how to know if your landing page is really working.