I often get asked whether landing pages are bad for SEO…
Landing pages are designed in a way that is focused on the single goal for that particular page.
Website owners tend to build landing pages for bespoke and one-off marketing campaigns. It often means that these pages are set to no-index so they cannot show in the organic search results.
However, not all landing pages need to be designed in this way and can actually offer some real value to users.
In this article, we will discuss what landing pages are and whether they can be good or bad for SEO.
What is a landing page?
- What is a landing page?
- What is the difference between a landing page and a website?
- What are landing page goals?
- What makes a bad landing page?
- Does a landing page affect SEO?
- Do landing pages rank on Google?
- Why are landing pages important for SEO?
- Conclusion
Landing pages are a great way to get visitors to your website. They’re designed with one specific goal in mind, which often leads them down an engaging path that will result in more conversions for your business.
Whilst other pages on your website serve different purposes, landing pages are specifically designed to nurture potential customers in a way that leads to the direct purpose of the page, whether that be a sale or an enquiry.
What is the difference between a landing page and a website home page?
Whilst landing pages and websites are both designed in a way to attract potential customers to your business, there are a few significant differences between them.
Some of the key differences between landing pages and websites include:
- Landing pages have no navigation whilst your home page and website are designed to navigate your customers around the entire site.
- Landing page traffic may come only from sources where your campaigns are running whilst users can land on your website either directly or via many other sources.
- Homepages act as the front page of your business whilst landing pages are designed to be separate from your website (although using the same branding, styling, colours etc.)
- Whilst your website may have multiple goals, landing pages are designed to funnel the traffic to a single goal.
A successful landing page will maintain the brand styling whilst at the same time being focused on trying to achieve a single goal. Landing pages are not necessarily designed for search engine rankings but you should still craft the design with search engine optimisation best practices in mind.
What are landing page goals?
The goal of your landing page should be clear. If you want to generate leads, it’s important that visitors are motivated by what will happen if they click on the call to action, whatever that may be.
Some of the landing page goals that businesses will use to qualify a “goal” include:
Lead generation
Lead generation involves designing a landing page to either capture emails or designed to make users submit a contact form which in turn leads to a conversation.
eCommerce transaction
This particular goal involves a direct transaction, where the only decision a customer has to make is to make a purchase.
Branding
This could be to promote an event or just generally spread the awareness of your brand in the online space.
Does a landing page affect SEO?
Landing pages if they are indexed can have both a positive and negative impact on SEO. A well-designed landing page should encourage users to engage and interact with the page.
User interaction
User interaction with a page is a big ranking signal in search engines today. Therefore, if you can create a landing page that gets a good level of interaction, then it can certainly have a positive impact on SEO.
SEO friendly landing pages
In terms of creating SEO landing pages, you should definitely build it like you are putting together any other page on your website in terms of title and content readability.
Page speed
You also should ensure that your landing page speed is fast like any other page on your website in order to reduce your bounce rates.
What makes a bad landing page?
When you create landing pages, you need to make sure that the page has a clear intent behind it. Any page you design for that matter should have some sort of intention behind it. If you are building a page with content that doesn’t really take a user anywhere, then it really serves no purpose.
Some of the bad landing page conventions include:
- No clear call to action on the page
- Slow loading times
- Large blocks of content
- Buttons that blend into the background colour of the design
- By using a lot of internal links to other pages on your website
Landing page optimisation is vital in order to create a campaign that will convert and deliver an intuitive experience for your users.
Do landing pages rank on Google?
In reality, all pages on a website are landing pages. Therefore, Google will rank landing pages that are well linked, well written and well engaged.
In the context of a landing page in this article, which is with the sole purpose of driving a sale and keeping users on a specific page, if that page is indexed then it probably will not rank as well as a page that is internally linked to other pages.
The majority of organic traffic that lands on a page will investigate a brand and have a look at more than one page before deciding whether to make a purchase or not. Therefore, if your landing pages have no menu navigation or internal links to other pages on your website, the chances are that it will not rank, especially if you are trying to rank for your primary keywords.
Why are landing pages important for SEO?
Landing pages are crucial to your digital marketing strategy. If they don’t convert visitors into customers, then the time spent on them might be wasted.
Landing pages that are used either for one-off campaigns or are designed to rank organically are both equally as important.
Search engines reward websites that are highly engaged with and ultimately, you should utilise good SEO practices in order to enhance the user’s experience with your pages.
Conclusion
To conclude, are landing pages bad for SEO? Really, landing pages are not designed to be optimised for search engines as the goals are slightly different.
You are building a page designed to drive conversions and goals specific to your business. Landing pages are certainly not a bad thing for SEO and can actually enhance the traffic on your website if they are interacted with and engaged with enough.
