The only reason you have anyone on your landing page anyway is because they clicked on a search engine link that brought them there. Something they typed into Google brought up a string of results, and whether you were on the first page or quite a few back, something interested them. They clicked on the link, and were brought to your landing page.
Now the question is what are you going to do to keep them interested? How are you going to get them to look around your site, click on your advertisements, and maybe even buy one of your products? You’re going to get them interested, and keep them interested, by having great landing page content. Let’s take a look at how you can go about getting that.
Make it Short
When someone clicks on a link to get to your website, it means they’re surfing around. You’ve got to pull them in quick, or they’ll jump to the next link down on the Search Engine Results Page. Give them a quick, easy to see paragraph or two, perhaps in bullet points and with hyperlinked text, which tells them what they’re looking for.
How do you know what they’re looking for? Because you’ve SEO’d your site to such an extent that you pulled them in. One of the keywords that you used somewhere got their attention and now they’re reading your content. You landing page therefore needs content that shows those keywords loud and clear, and within a few seconds. If people don’t see what they’re looking for in that amount of time, they’ll go somewhere else. If you want to make them a regular visitor, or a satisfied customer, you’ve got to sell it to them fast.
Make it Sweet
Make sure you’re clear on what your landing page’s intention is, and make sure your visitor is clear as well. Use big text, do what you can to draw attention to it, but please state your goal, service, or product that you’re pushing.
If you’re goal is to post great blog content about wheelbarrows and the myriad attachments that go with them, make that clear in your headlines and short supporting paragraph.
If your service is 1,001 Fun, Amazing, Exciting, and Mind-Blowing English Classroom Games, all for the low prices of $9.99/month, put it right at the top of your page and with and eye-catching image nearby.
And if you’re product is “The Best Damned Toenail Clippers This Side of the Mississippi!” well, by all means, state it loud and clear and put a picture of them there too.
Make it to the Point
The point of your landing page is to get visitors to what is the point of your website, your content or products. You don’t want people spending a lot of time on your landing page.
Think of it as a busy runway at the airport. Planes are constantly taking off and landing, and one can’t be sitting there for too long. You’ve got to get them moving on to their destination, which in this case is your blog or products page. The landing page drew them in, but now you’ve got to send your visitors to where they can help you the most.
That means you need to have your content quite short, and you’ve got to have links, preferably anchor text, within your content so that visitors can get to the pages you want them to go to, and which they want to go to. Don’t let someone read a lot on your landing page. Don’t clutter it up with a lot of written content, or pictures. If they like what they see on your landing page, they’ll click onto your other pages, and you need to help them do that.
In all of my time searching around thousands of different sites doing content writing work for people, I’ve enjoyed seeing simple sites more than complicated ones. A great banner, an appropriate picture, and great links with descriptions telling me where they’ll take me and what they’ll do for me work so much better than endless blocks of text, pictures, or sales-pitch. Keep it short, and make a regular user out of your first-time visitors.