As most online marketers know, keyword strategy and research is considered to be an important part of your digital marketing strategy. This is because it has the power to dictate the kind of traffic that will be attracted to your website. Moreover, it will also help determine that the people who visit your site actually end up doing whatever you require them to do at the site.
Here the whole concept of the web marketing tunnel is aimed at attracting visitors ‘and’ getting them to take those actions that are the main raison d’etre of the site. Buying products, if it’s an e-commerce related web store or filling out forms in case its an information collection site
Google (and other powerful search engines) roll out new search algorithms regularly. This means that many old SEO approaches have become obsolete.
The theme that is now ruling the web marketing roost is that SEO and keyword search is now even more imperative today than ever before. The development and maintenance of different types of website landing pages is a very important case in point.
Landing Pages Lead to Landing Conversions
For a newbie, the very term “landing page” can conjure up an image of visitors that drop out of the sky to land on your web page. But, of course, these people are not coming to the site randomly. On the contrary, they are ‘directed’ there. And any online business that is able to guide them to its landing page is well on its way to understanding their customers. However, before we discuss the design and optimization of highly effective landing pages, it is important to understand the purpose of these pages.
What is a Landing Page?
From a technical point of view, just about every page where a visitor lands, is a landing page. However, it is a good idea to create a selected set of highly optimized pages for this purpose. This may even be a single page (often referred to as a Preferred Landing Page) or a collection of such web pages.
Such a page has the potential to greatly increase the chances of permanent conversion. Here a conversion means that the visitor is a convert. That is, he is doing whatever the site and its creators want him to do. So if a site sells baseball equipment, he will purchase it and so on.
As a general rule, the landing page will fulfill many different marketing needs. These include the following:
- Web Strategy
- Social Media
- SEO
- Display Media
- Paid Search
- Email Marketing
Furthermore, all of these actions will take place on a global level. This is why getting both the strategy and the content just right, matters a lot.
SEO & Web Design
Almost all website development that takes place, including the site’s landing pages, is usually conducted with the help of various tools that have highly automated functions. They effectively eliminate the need for any live-site designer to code in CSS, Java, HTML5 or other online site coding language.
Basically, the user informs the tool with regard to what he would like to do, and the result will automatically appear on the website. For instance, in case you are creating your site on WordPress then you can use its own custom tools for the job. The platform further offers to set up and configure any domain so that it is possible to launch the site within seconds.
WordPress is also SEO optimized so that your site will be highly visible to users on most of the more popular search engines. Furthermore, you can also use the Yoast Plugin to optimize your site’s meta titles, meta tags, keywords, and meta description. This makes it easier for the search engine to find the site.
Various Adobe software suites also have their own platforms that also boast this capability. Their most popular SEO software solutions include the Adobe Muse and the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). The Adobe Muse basically provides highly detailed SEO guidelines as well as an extensive database of SEO files. These will both aid and assist you in generating the most effective onsite SEO solution.
AEM is also a very useful tool that is used to both build and manage different enterprise websites as standalone platforms. In fact, AEM has been heavily integrated with many other broad-based solutions that are used to perform both SEO analysis as well as compliance.
Mitigating the Risk Element
However, it is very important to understand that improving SEO via ‘off the shelf’ products such as Muse and AEM involves a certain element of risk. This risk emanates from the fact that SEO is highly dynamic science.
Most search engine algorithms are subject to change without any prior notice. Apart from that, customer sentiments can also shift. Hard coding, integrating, and even the automation of different SEO processes dictate their own maintenance schedules. Especially, once all of these diverse changes come into play. This is a discipline that actively requires dedication as well as a lot of attention to detail.
For instance, you must gather different metrics that will support your site’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). While simultaneously conducting your data analysis when required. Here, performance drop-offs are expected, of course. But in order to avoid excessive fluctuation, it is important that your marketing campaign’s direction should be altered.This has to be done in a bid to stop the expected reduction in the performance of the site
For example, when Google updates any of its mobile-friendly algorithms than Adobe Muse’s SEO processes will also have to change accordingly.
Why You Should Use SEO Optimized Landing Pages?
Ultimately, SEO optimized landing pages deliver digital relevance to the site’s target audience round the clock. They also help to differentiate your brand or product from the other players in the same category. Moreover, they also give a lot of space in order to deliver top value and simultaneously generate a surface need. Lastly, they have to motivate the visitor toward the best possible call to action.
Mixing and Matching Head Terms with Long-Tail Keywords
“Head terms” refers to any keyword that follows the K.I.S.S (keep it short and sweet) principle. On the other hand, your average long-tail keyword almost always contains a minimum of at least three or more words. Let us take a quick look at a few examples of these two types of keywords:
- Head term: Shooting pointers
- Long-tail keywords: How to become a really good shot
- Head Term: Cooking guidelines
- Long-tail keyword: How to make the best pizza
Here, there is a key difference between these two types of keywords. This has a lot to do with the fact that the head term is more competitive than the long-tail keyword. There are literally millions of websites out there that specifically target “cooking tips.” This makes it very difficult to rank them amongst the top ten each engine results.
Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are less competitive. However, this benefit is offset by the lack of usage and also by the fact that very few people would be searching for them at any given point in time. In other words, you will have to understand your target audience in order to create the perfect blend of the long tail and short-tail keywords.
The better you understand your target audience, the better will be your marketing strategy. This is why it is very necessary to work with highly accurate and effective long-tail keywords.
However, you should not put all your eggs in one basket by using only long tail keywords. You should pepper your landing page as well as other pages on your website with both long-tail keywords and carefully selected head terms. This is the best way to derive maximum mileage from your SEO strategy.
You Should Always Refrain from Forcing Your Keywords on your Site
Many small and medium-sized business enterprises try to stuff as many keywords as they can in an effort to create high keyword density. However, such arbitrary keyword can be counterproductive because a glut of keywords is both redundant and superfluous. Apart from that, it is also directly responsible for significant degradation of the quality of the content.
This seemingly rigid adherence towards reaching a mythical ‘density goal’ does not advance an SEO strategy. On the contrary, it can lead to lopsided and even bizarre sentences that can destroy the readability of the content. Apart from that, mindlessly shoveling keywords on your web pages alerts Google and its algorithms figure out what you are up to. They will automatically reduce your visibility by downgrading your ratings.
The concept is very simple. The keywords that you are placing in your content should be inserted as naturally as possible. If you can do that, then it is all well and good. But should your keyword insertion create multiple distractions for your reader, it will destroy your sentence structure and you are better off not using these keywords.
The best way forward would be to go back to the drawing board and find other keywords that you will be able to insert in your website without creating any discordant notes. This way, your content will remain both legible and coherent and your keywords will slide in effortlessly in your content.
Keep Refreshing your Keyword Lists
Keywords have a useful life cycle. This means that over time, they stop being effective. This is exactly why you should try out different keyword search tools such as Google AdWords, keyword planner or Google Trends to periodically check the popularity of the keywords that you use and make all relevant changes accordingly.
This entire research exercise must be conducted at least once a month. This is the best way to get rid of all the ‘dead keywords’ and also discover fresh and relevant ones for all your SEO needs.
Conclusion
Attracting the attention of the right kind of high-quality leads is not always easy and it requires a well thought out keyword strategy if you want your site to be successful.
Here, it is very important to understand that the site must always be fully optimized, especially with regard to the very latest algorithms currently in use by Google, Bing and other powerful and popular search engines.
If you have optimized your site properly then you can rest assured that your target audience will not only be attracted to your website, but your bounce rate will always be very low. In other words, your leads will remain there long enough to become willing converts. However, keep in mind that SEO is not a one-time thing. It is an ongoing process that requires your time and attention. So make sure you do it right and consistently to see your website be a success in no time. Because, after all, SEO in website design is of seminal importance!
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