- What is a landing page?
- What are the different types of landing pages?
- What’s the difference between a landing page and a product page?
- How do I create a landing page?
- What about landing page SEO?
- Landing page vs splash page
- Are FAQ pages good landing pages?
- How to a/b test landing pages?
- Where to post landing pages?
- Is content important in landing pages?
- Is speed important?
- Are landing pages bad for SEO?
What is a landing page?
A landing page is simply another URL on a website or platform that people land on after clicking through from another part of the internet.
A landing page could be a page on your website that you direct people to after they click on your ads, sales pages, and internal links. Landing pages can also be used to receive visitors from other websites, affiliate links, and social media posts.
There is plenty of overlap between a landing page and a sales page or a product page. The definition is quite fluid but just know that any page on the internet can be considered a landing page.
The most common use for these kinds of pages is to inform visitors about a product or service. The pages are often stripped-down versions of your website with no menu, sidebar, or extraneous information. The landing page is there for one purpose only and anything not related to the topic or goal is discarded.
Here’s an example of a landing page: SEO Audit
As you can see, there’s no menu, sidebar, or anything else apart from information about the SEO audit service.
What are the different types of landing pages?
There are many different ways to use this kind of page on your website.
1. Lead capture – Used to gather email addresses, contact details, or Facebook messenger contacts. The most common use is email address lead capture.
2. Thank You Page – After a visitor gives you their email address, fills out a form, or buys a product, it’s a good idea to send them to a thank you page. Here you can direct them to useful information about your product or service. You can give them links to other products or social media accounts. You can also use the Thank You page to trigger an advertising pixel (Facebook, Google Ads, etc). Knowing which users on the ad networks have already converted to customers or email list subscribers saves you from advertising to them.
3. Product Page – Any WooCommerce (or otherwise) product page can be used as a landing page directly.
What’s the difference between a landing page and a product page?
The first thing to know is that they can be the same thing. If you want to create a hyper-focused copywritten sales page to sell a product but you don’t want to make changes to your product pages (in case you negatively affect conversions or rankings in Google), a landing page can be used as a standalone page to promote the product.
Landing pages for product launches are a good idea because they focus more on things like scarcity, newness, and powerful copywriting as well as striking imagery.
With many e-commerce product pages or service page software, it can be hard to create visually dazzling offers. The fixed layout might not suit the copywriting that will sell your product.
Landing pages can also be used to presell products before launch or gather email addresses before the product page is published.
If you sell a course and would like to pre-sell the page outside of your online learning platform this is the perfect opportunity to create a course sales page that converts customers.
How do I create a landing page?
You can use WordPress to create simple (or complex) pages or you can use 3rd party products such as the following
- Framer – the pre-built templates in this new Webflow and WordPress alternative are so gorgeous, you can use them right out of the box. The drag-and-drop editor lets you customize every element until it matches your brand's personality. Framer is a superb landing page builder. The free plan is generous and worth a look.
- Woorise is designed to help you get great-looking landing pages quickly. Plans include over 100 different pre-built pages as well as payment forms, and the ability to create giveaway contest promotions.
- SeedProd is one of the most popular ‘landing page' and ‘coming soon page' plugins for WordPress. It's also capable of creating full WordPress themes based on templates.
- LeadPages is one of the longest-established and best-known landing page software companies. Get proven templates, A/B testing features, fast hosting, pop-ups, and alert bars.
Keep in mind that while fancy sales pages might compel people to take a look, the most important part of your page is the copy. If you have a compelling offer and good copywriting skills, a plain text page with some regular formatting and imagery will work fine.
Most basic WordPress themes have a simple landing page template that strips away the menu and sidebar. This is suitable if you don’t need fancy designs or layouts.
What about landing page SEO?
This is an important point. Optimizing your page for SEO depends on whether you would like the page to be found on Google. If so, you would allow Google to index the page. If the landing page is optimized for Google Search, you might get traffic from people searching for your product or service.
Optimize a landing page for SEO as you would any other page. Make sure the topic is clear, you are answering a commonly asked question, and the page is technically sound (no huge images, irrelevant information, broken links, etc)
In many cases, however, we might not want to optimize a landing page for SEO and we would instruct Google to not index our page. Why would we do this? There are several reasons. Here are a few:
- The content might be timely and only relevant at a specific time of year or for a once-off event.
- You might have a product page or homepage with very similar information and you don’t want to duplicate your content or risk keyword cannibalisation
- You don’t want people to find a special offer that is only available to visitors through certain channels.
Landing page vs splash page
A landing page is a standalone page on your site or on 3rd party software. A splash page is a type of overlay or popup that takes over the screen and covers the content on your website in order to inform or convert a visitor. Splash pages tend to give an introduction or teaser of what to expect on the following screens or the actual website. Splash pages are often displayed the first time a visitor lands on your website. Landing pages are designed to make visitors do something, such as buy a product, sign up for a course, or join an email list.
Are FAQ pages good landing pages?
FAQ pages can be great for informing visitors about your product or service. They can be used as a resource for answering your visitor's queries but you can also include contact forms, quizzes, surveys, and calculators, and links to your most important pages among the questions and answers. Think of these pages as help pages or customer services resources designed as FAQs.
How to a/b test landing pages?
This can be a complicated process so it's easier to leave split testing to dedicated software. Woorise and Leadpages offer comprehensive A/B testing for landing pages. Save a lot of time and potential for error by using the power of this software. AB Testing is a wonderful and inexpensive split testing tool for title tags, meta descriptions, copy, headlines, and more. It can also identify content decay and keywords that will get you more organic traffic.
Where to post landing pages?
Post landing pages wherever you want to send traffic. If you have a WordPress website you can create a new page and publish it directly on your site. Or use landing page builders that include hosting so you can have faster, dedicated pages for your campaigns.
Is content important in landing pages?
Content in terms of copy that converts visitors to customers is the most important aspect of a good landing page.
Is speed important?
Fast-loading landing pages are essential if you want to prevent visitors from bouncing to another offer or website. The faster your page loads, the easier it will be to convince people to buy from you. At the very least, make sure your landing pages load fast on mobile devices.
Are landing pages bad for SEO?
Landing pages are not bad for SEO as long as you are aware of the best practices. If your page content targets a specific keyword that you already rank for with another page on your website, make sure to set the noindex attribute. You can do this in the landing page code or with your SEO Plugin.
How to find landing pages in google analytics?
As long as the URL is on your domain in Google Analytics, you can find the pages by going to Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages. This report shows the statistics for the first page visitors see when arriving on your website. Filter for individual pages to get metrics like bounce rate, average time on page, and more.