Search Engine Optimization (SEO) grabs the eyeballs of passive online visitors and glues their attention to your web page. Proper optimization on your landing page continues to draw audiences long after you stop marketing the page. Search engines will not display your website and will rank it poorly if you make the following mistakes.
1- Having very short content
Search engines are business entities. Just like any other outfit, they always want to provide great service so that customers return. According to Sachs Marketing Group, Google will not be interested in serving your website to searchers if the content is too short, irrelevant and does not provide real value. Give straightforward, actionable and practical service.
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Longer landing pages answer people’s quests more conclusively than shorter ones.
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Let you landing page be 1,000-3,000 words.
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Do not just focus on the word count; deliver accurate, relevant and riveting information.
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When audiences spend more time on your site, you increase chances of higher ranking.
What keyword phrase are you targeting your audience with? Search it online and look at the first three results. Find out how long these landing pages from your competitors are and design content that is longer than theirs. Word count comes second after user intent.
2- Failure to include visual elements
If you have chunks of plain text in your landing page, readers will find it difficult to focus. Today, the reading culture is effectively eroded as concentration spans decrease. Nobody will read your 3000-word web page from beginning to end without twitching an eye. Failure to include visual elements will cause passive visitors to hit the ‘Return’ button.
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Images should be placed within every 80-100 words.
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The color, graphics and visual appeal of infographics deliver your message properly.
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Short videos of ‘how to’ say more than words can ever achieve.
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For increased usability use the ALT text attributes on images. When they show up on user’s search engine result pages, it will lead searchers to your landing page.
3- Slow loading speed
Word Stream states that speed creates the largest impact on the performance of a landing page. You may have strong CTA messages, effective key phrases and killer headlines. These great SEO elements will not convert if your landing page takes ages to load. According to the same authority, 75% of people will turn away if it loads in more than 5 seconds.
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Get rid of codes that establish superfluous junk on your landing page.
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Excessive redirects bog down your server leading to slow load times.
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Upgrade or overhaul your web hosting plans.
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Compress and resize images for faster loading speeds especially on mobile.
Note that mobile load rates are far much slower than computers, yet mobile users have outpaced their desktop counterparts. You could eliminate this problem by testing the page’s speed using one of the leading insights tools. PageSpeed Insights from Google is one such recommendable tool.
4- Cluttered and confusing design
Half of all landing pages across the internet today contain multiple offers. Yours could as well fall under this category. If the page is poorly organized and has multiple recurring clutters, it will not appeal the eyes of readers. Below is a visually flattering design of a landing page belonging to Moz.
What aspects make this landing page superior?
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There is a strong value proposition on the headline.
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The image highlights what prospective customers stand to benefit from this business.
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The copy comes in small chunks, making readability great.
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The CTA buttons are in striking color; people searching for this service are obliged to click.
A great rule of the thumb for proper landing page design is to get rid of all navigation bars. These cause visitors to click away and get distracted from the very page that you want them to read. When your landing page has riveting substance delivered around impressive design, visitors will avoid hunting around other pages belonging to your competitors.
Tip: You can take the help of a landing page builder to create high-converting landing pages in no time.
5- Disregarding page data
Do you know the people who come to your website via your landing page? What are their demographics and needs? There is only one way to find out-tracking web page data. Keeping track of the activities of the traffic on your page arms you with unrivalled user intelligence. Unamo suggests regular analytics for the following reasons.
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You will know the number of unique visitors in a typical day, week or month.
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Find out how many past visitors have returned.
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Discover your landing page’s conversion rate.
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Know the bounce rate and crack solutions to decrease a high bounce rate.
Google Analytics for example is an excellent basic tool for spotting page mistakes and identifying conversion opportunities. However, it is limited to a certain event. Session Recordings not only highlights the event, but goes further to describe where and how the event occurred.
