When building a landing page for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) it’s important to understand the purpose of these landing pages. It’s a direct means of focusing the user’s attention and guiding them in a specific direction. In order to do this, there are overall guidelines and best practices that must be utilized to ensure good conversion rates.
Hero Image and Headline
Make sure that you immediately capture the user’s attention with a compelling image that fully represents the subject/offer. This image must encapsulate what this user will be looking forward to once they decide to take action. Alongside, a focused headline must be paired with this strong hero image. Thus the user will have an immediate sense of what this landing page is offering.
Call to Action and Forms
Having a Call to Action (CTA) and a primary form above the fold is an important practice in building SEM landing pages. This creates a quick way for users to sign up or contact for more information. The form should also be simplified. Fewer fields means a greater ease of submission. Having a CTA above the fold as well will be more effective than if the user has to scroll down to look for one.
Mobile Friendly
Building your landing pages to be mobile-friendly is a huge point to follow due to our expansively digital world. Users are almost always on a phone and it’s more convenient to pull out a phone wherever you are as opposed to having to sit down and use a computer. Testing your landing page to make sure it is fast-loading, responsive and mobile-friendly will create a great user experience. In addition, it will build the user’s trust in the product and site.
Cohesive Design
Your landing page’s design should be cohesive to the main site. There can be some design elements that allow the landing page to creatively stand on its own. However overall branding elements should reflect the website.
Tracking Results with Analytics
Before we build a landing page for search engine marketing, we plan for the actions we would like visitors to take when they visit the page. Then we set up Google Analytics tags to track these actions. As a result, we can track the visitor’s activity once they arrive from a PPC (Pay Per Click) ad. We can see how long they stay on the page, how far down they scroll, and which elements such as links, buttons or forms they click or complete.
We consider actions such as form completion or phone calls to be conversions. They mean that the visitor contacted the business for more information, to buy their product, or use their services. In addition, we can use the Google Analytics data to improve the landing page. We do this by testing different variations of headlines or images to see if we get better results.
If you would like help with marketing and advertising, feel free to contact us. We offer a variety of services like search engine optimization and marketing & brand strategy, and more to small and large companies.
