10 Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages
YNOT – If you’re hoping to get traffic to your website, then you need to optimize your site’s landing pages for search engines while keeping in mind that web users will be viewing the same pages and evaluating your website based on what they see. This article offers 10 steps for building SEO-friendly and user-friendly landing pages.
When arriving on a landing page, web users subconsciously are asking the following questions:
• Does the page load quickly?
• Have they come to the right page?
• Does the page offer what they are looking for?
• Does the page appear to be from a reliable and trustworthy source?
• Is there an easy-to-find and understandable call to action?
Failure to meet any of these conditions on your landing pages may result in the user hitting the back button and returning to the search engine results.
Landing pages and search engine spiders
Search engines analyze the content and code within pages of a website and consider factors including:
- Page URL
- Title META tag
- Keyword META tag (sometimes)
- Description META tag
- Headings
- Page content
- Images and descriptive “alt” tags
- Links (anchor text)
Spending the extra time and effort to improve landing pages will improve rankings and ensure you meet your conversion goals.
1. URLs
URLs are visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and play a role in a successful click-through rate (CTR). URLs with long query strings may confuse search engine spiders and prevent them from reaching some of the site’s valuable content.
To create the best URLs for spiders, remember:
- Always use hyphens, not underscores, to separate words.
- Avoid using “stop” words like “and,” “of,” “the,” etc.
- Use clearly named URLs that include the keyword(s) targeted for the page.
A good example of a search engine-friendly URL for an article about dating in London might be:[HTML] http://www.mysite.com/dating-london.html[/HTML]
Note that the URL is brief, yet descriptive of the page’s content.
2. Title META tag
This is the way title tags appear in HTML code:
[HTML]
[/HTML]
Text in the title tag plays a significant part in successful SEO and is displayed prominently on search engine results pages, meaning it can be a winning factor for high click-through rates. The title tag is also a crucial bit of data for which search engine spiders watch.
When creating title tags, keep in mind:
- Every title tag within a website must be unique.
- Choose keywords that match the concept of your document.
- Focus on one keyword per page.
- Bear in mind that most search engines will display no more than the first 65 characters in their SERPs, so the meaningful message to the user should be within the first 65 characters.
- Overall length of the title tag should be limited to 90-108 characters.
- Place the most important keywords at the beginning of the title tag.
- If it’s necessary to include a company’s name, the company name should be placed at the end of the title tag.
- Avoid overstuffing the title tag with keywords designed to place the page in as many SERPs as possible. Settle on the most important one or two categories of results and attempt to place highly on those SERPs.
An example of a good title tag for the same page mentioned earlier might be:[HTML]
3. Description META tag
The content from this tag displays itself under the title tag in the SERPs. The Description tag is crucial for search engine crawlers and a persuasive factor for web users interested in your products or services.
When creating Description tags, bear in mind:
- The tag should be as descriptive, accurate and enticing as possible.
- Try to use all the keywords and key phrases that relate to the content on that particular page, but don’t make the tag so convoluted it becomes useless. One or two sentences are plenty.
- Place the most important keywords as close to the beginning as possible.
- Try not to exceed 155 characters, including spaces.
An example of a good Description tag:[HTML]
[/HTML]
4. Keywords META tag
The META Keywords tag is where you list the targeted keywords and keyword phrases for a page. The keywords tag is not as powerful as it once was. Because of rampant abuse, some search engines — particularly Google — place little to no importance on keywords. On the other hand, Yahoo still recommends defining keywords.
To create an effective Keywords tag:
- Use commas to separate each keyword or phrase.
- Do not repeat the any word more than three times.
- If you repeat a word, separate the occurrences.
- Limit your keywords to 12 that take up no more than 200 characters, including spaces.
- Use a unique range of keywords for each page instead of using the same keywords on every page.
A good example of a Keywords tag:[HTML] [/HTML]
5. Body content
Search engines use the content in the body of a web page to determine a number of factors. Most importantly, they try to determine what the page’s subject by context, and then compare that to the page’s title. When you’re creating page content, try to imagine they search terms a user might employ to locate content like yours, then:
- Use the chosen search terms and keywords to guide the text you use on the page.
- Remember: Good copy sells, so write for users while keeping search engines in mind — not vice versa.
- Keep the content pages descriptive but not monotonous by using plurals, synonyms etc.
- Use keywords as early in the visible content as possible.
- Sprinkle keywords throughout the page.
- Include a search phrase in the last paragraph on a page.
- Occasionally using bold text to highlight keywords can help with some search engines, but the practice raises a red flag with others.
- Focus on one keyword theme per page.
- An average of 250 or more words of text per page is recommended.
Remember: Text embedded within images or Flash content is invisible to search engines.
6. Headings and subheadings
This is a heading tag:
[HTML]
Live Show
[/HTML]
Search engine spiders view anything within h1 brackets as important, because what resides inside the brackets typically describes the following content in some significant way. In HTML, the headings tag is based on a hierarchal structure ranging from h1 to h6, with h1 holding the most weight in search engines.
When constructing headings:
- Always start the content of your page with h1.
- Semantically mark up your heading tags from h1 downwards without skipping any in the hierarchy.
- In the h1 tag, use at least one of the same keywords that appears in the title and URL, or use a close synonym.
- Avoid using the h1 tag more than once per page.
- H2 to h6 tags may be repeated, providing the paragraphs refer to separate subjects.
- Never rely on header text that is embedded in an image or Flash movie.
7. Navigation Structure
Avoid using JavaScript, Flash or image maps for links. Search engines generally only read HTML source code. Some are working toward indexing JavaScript and Flash, but they still have a long way to go. Pages with unfriendly navigation or linking structures will not always be crawled by spiders, leaving those pages un-indexed.
8. Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation shows the path to the current location, providing navigational assistance to users and spiders. Breadcrumbs generally are situated above the main content on a page. Because breadcrumbs typically use text-based links, this kind of navigation helps crawlers to determine keyword relevancy.
Here is an example of good breadcrumbs: [COLOR=black]Home > Date > London > Girls[/COLOR]. Each word would be a link to a higher location on the navigational tree. “Home,” of course, would link to the homepage. “Date” might link to a page that discusses dating in general and offers sub-links to pages offering advice about dating in different cities — hence, the “London” breadcrumb. Then, from the London page, one might be able to reach pages devoted to “Girls” and “Guys.”
9. Alt tags
The alt tag (short for “alternative tag”) displays text to a user when an image is missing or as an image loads. Its primary function is to accommodate text browsers or browsers whose users have disabled image functions. Alt tags also assist visually impaired users who employ screen readers. With some search engines, alt tags can help improve the text content of your landing page.
To get the most from alt tags:
- Use text that fulfills the same purpose as the image.
- Summarize the concept in as few words as possible.
- Do not stuff the tag with keywords.
- Use a unique description for each image.
Alt tags are embedded within image tags, like so:[HTML] [/HTML]
10. Images and Flash content
Web surfers despise slow-loading pages. In fact, studies have shown that un-optimized images and Flash content — both of which lengthen page-load times — are the among the primary reasons users abandon pages.
To make both search engines and end-users happy, consider these points:
- Search engines are blind to images and Flash, so only use them where you deem necessary.
- Always ensure images are presented in as low a resolution as possible without compromising the look and feel of the page.
- Save the image in the exact format and size required for the page layout. If you users to be able to view a larger image upon mouse-click, save a second version of the image somewhere on the server and link to it.
This article was contributed to YNOT by live-cam affiliate program RIVCash.