Just how challenging is it to get SEO leads for your business?
In the age of Google’s countless changes to the algorithm, and not to mention the continuing pressures of keeping websites up to spec, it appears that creating powerful landing pages is really the number one challenge to digital marketers.
Whatever your niche may be, this challenge persists, because of Google’s mobile first policy and the way it is now evaluating websites to see if the pages are indeed mobile-friendly and effective in providing an awesome experience to users.
The concept of the landing page has been around for decades and back in the nineties, people didn’t really think about how they designed landing pages because the Internet was much smaller, then. But today, with billions of Web pages and tens of thousands of competitors in different markets, not paying attention to your landing page just might cost you your business.
The main problem in today’s online environment is people’s dwindling attention spans. People are in a rush even when they are relaxed, and they no longer take kindly to websites that don’t load fast enough, or aren’t designed to provide the smoothest experience to users.
A landing page basically has one function – to capture a lead using a single or multiple CTAs (calls to action). Like everything else related to generating SEO leads and digital marketing in general, it sounds so simple, but in reality, it isn’t.
The two effects
Your landing page/s essentially have to do two things the moment a potential lead sees it: it has to inform, and second, it has to create a sense of urgency in the lead so that he signs up/downloads/books an appointment or perform any other action that will benefit the business.
Landing pages that have a vague function will likely fail, because it isn’t clear what the customer should do in the first place. A landing page with a clear intent and purpose will always succeed over those landing pages that may look good, but are graded zero for actual user intent.
Creating the most ideal landing page for your SEO business is definitely one of the top challenges that you have to start solving today if you want to get ahead of the competition.
Roadblocks to an effective landing page
If you want a rockstar landing page for mobile, you need to be aware of the obstacles that will prevent you from getting there in the first place. Below are some of the major difficulties that people face when designing a mobile landing page:
1. Headline and content – Your landing page has to be incredibly attractive and engaging from the headline down to the main body of the content, and finally, the CTAs. Some websites use regular blog posts to squeeze in CTAs, and the landing pages serve as both SEO-friendly content and sources of leads.
In order to get the right mix of information, engagement and urgency, you need to be able to craft powerful headlines that are no more than ten words each. The headline has to be catchy and powerful, so people will click on your link when they see your page on Google. Remember: your page can’t perform if people don’t click from the search engines in the first place.
2. Services and products descriptions – If you are designing a landing page so that people would make a purchase or contact you so they can hire you for SEO services, the specialized copy has to be there.
The copy has to be engaging, direct, and informative, while selling the most important benefits of working with your agency. Otherwise, people will not feel the urge to contact you on the same day that they found your website.
The greatest success in this context is if you can have people clicking on your buttons to contact your business, because they like what they saw. This is all that really matters in the end. All that effort to get them to click from Google and read through your content and stay on the page, all of these lead to one action – make contact and become a client.
3. The lead capture form – The lead capture form is a whole ‘nother beast that needs to be tamed in order to work properly. Some companies now offer easy to use templates for pop-up forms, but more than the appearance of the lead capture form, you need to understand that the actual call to action there, the headline, sub-headline and any additional texts there need to be direct, relevant and on-point.
If you haven’t been having much success in getting people to make contact with your lead capture forms, there is definitely something wrong in how they are designed in the first place. Normally, you can fix this by perform A/B testing to see if your other copies are working better than what you are currently presenting to your customers.
4. Navigation menu? – The ‘old wisdom’ for the navigation menu is that it has to be there all the time to make sure that people have access to other parts of your website. However, a mobile landing page is not a regular post or page at all. It is designed specifically to capture leads.
Statistics, surprisingly show that when you remove the navigation menu on a landing page, the conversions can increase by as much as one hundred percent.
The reason for this huge change in customer behavior is by removing the navigation menu on the landing page itself or at least positioning or reconfiguring it so it doesn’t become too visible, you are removing one of the distractions that can prevent a customer from urgently acting upon your CTAs.
You can add content to a page, spruce it up with images, but if the intention behind the page is to capture a lead, then it has to be entirely focused on this intent alone and nothing else. You can always provide a small “Home” button somewhere on the page, but as for drop-down menus and other distractions, it would probably be better to remove them entirely.
