Demystifying Landing Pages

Ask three people what a “landing page” is, and you'll probably get three different answers.

One might say it's the homepage of a website. Another might describe it as a top navigation item in a website menu. The other person might describe it as the place a visitor ends up after clicking on a link somewhere else.

In fact, all three are correct.

In the classical sense, landing pages are indeed any page where visitors to your site wind up or “land.” This can be a homepage, a main menu page or a contact page. So, while none of the three people surveyed would be technically wrong…from a marketing perspective, none of them is really right.

What is a Landing Page?

Imagine an airport with all of its runways: the constant bustle of air traffic coming in and air traffic going out, with people boarding and unboarding, preparing for the next stage of their journey. These landing strips are the airport's lifeline-its entire reason for being. The air traffic control tower, the baggage claim and the terminals all may have their place in the great air travel continuum, but without well-marked and well-maintained runways, mass air transit as we know it just wouldn't be possible.

In many ways, landing pages are the runways of your website. Visitors can only buy your products, learn about your services or engage with your content after they have arrived. Landing pages are what bring them in. If optimized properly, landing pages can deliver top quality leads right to your doorstep.

Landing pages are like one-page websites designed solely for the purpose of bringing in traffic. Once on the page, visitors can be routed wherever you want them to go. You can drive traffic to your site without using landing pages, but if you sell products or services that are typically bought compulsively, a dedicated landing page can help you close the sale immediately. On the other hand, if you offer a service that requires a more methodical, measured approach, landing pages can offer your prospects the valuable information they seek, but only if they provide valuable contact information to you in return.

That's why “landing pages” are sometimes referred to as “conversion pages.”

Of course, many businesses don't want to interrupt the flow of their websites with pages that deliver such a “hard sell.” To avoid having their site seen as “tacky” or “pushy,” many business owners opt for a landing page-a specific page that is completely separate from their main site, yet maintains a consistency of brand.

How Should Landing Pages Be Used?

Just as runways serve as launching pads for new experiences, landing pages should be seen as serving the same purpose. Each landing page has a main objective: compel visitors to take the action you want them to.

• LEAD GENERATING LANDING PAGES

The purpose of a lead generating landing page is to gain information for later marketing. Whether the page is selling or promoting a product or just prompting a user to provide their name and email for more information, the goal is to gather information to make future sales. The information users provide gives the company the ability to promote their products through other digital marketing channels. There are a number of ways a company can use lead generating landing pages, including:

o Webinar registration

o Free trial or product (e.g., e-book or white paper)

o Coupons/discounts

o Product launch notification

• CLICK-THROUGH LANDING PAGES

A favorite among e-commerce businesses, the click-through landing page is designed to persuade prospective customers to purchase a company's products or services. This type of landing page leads to another page to finalize the purchase, typically to company's electronic shopping cart.

An attractive landing page can transform your conversion rate, boosting it by over 40 percent.

What Goes into Developing a Landing Page?

The design of your landing page greatly influences your lead-to-sales conversion. Many passengers get nervous as their plane comes in for a landing-do they really want to make this giant leap, this purchase, to explore an uncertain future? According to Kissmetrics, a delay in page response of a single second can reduce your conversions by 7 percent. A smooth landing makes all the difference. A cool, crisp description of your product or service will help seal the deal, earning the trust of your prospects and turning them into customers.

Keep in mind that when designing the contact form for a landing page, the more information you request of your visitors, the less likely they are to stick around. Not everyone enjoys providing their life history online, especially if they're unfamiliar with your company.

For example, if you're offering a free e-book, and it requires a form to be filled out before delivery, the ratio between how much they need the information in that e-book should outweigh the information they're willing to give you to get it. In other words, if you're going to ask for more than just a name and email address, your offer should be quite compelling.

By transforming the average landing page experience into something truly special, you give your prospects a window seat that lets them enjoy the ride and lets your business fly to new heights.

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A RankBrain Guide for Everyone

Machine learning is the future of Internet search.

With RankBrain, we finally have an artificial intelligence (AI) system that will give answers to all of our questions. In Oct. 2015, Google announced that this new system will become an inseparable part of its search engine. Basically, its main function is to better understand queries and provide end-users with more relevant results.

So, how does RankBrain do this?

Given that this is a program, it first has to convert language into something more understandable. It puts words and phrases into mathematical entities called vectors. This allows it to interpret results. After that, all these phrases are categorized into clusters based on their semantic meaning. If two clusters are interconnected, they will be placed near each other. In that way, RankBrain is able to understand synonyms and related phrases and to make connections between them.

HISTORY OF SEMANTIC SEARCH

First introduced in 2012, Knowledge Graph represented a very sophisticated system that treats keywords as real things, the same way humans see them, instead of plain strings. It used numerous databases to extract information. As a result, Google started understanding relations between objects marking the transition toward semantic search.

With Hummingbird, Google managed to take their product a step further. In 2013, the company implemented this algorithm into their search engine. Similarly to the previous Knowledge Graph, it included semantic search, being able to understand synonyms and related keywords. But, there was one big difference. With this algorithm, Google was also able to understand user intent. In a sense, if Knowledge Graph was first step toward semantic Web, Hummingbird was the initial phase toward machine learning.

WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT RANKBRAIN?

About 15 percent of queries on the Internet are completely new. On daily basis, it translates to about 450 million searches. Unfortunately, Google can't find a valid answer to many of these questions. It is no wonder that the company is constantly trying to find ways to reduce this percentage. Thus, Google invented RankBrain.

The thing you have to understand about RankBrain is the fact that it is actually a part of Hummingbird algorithm and that it implemented all the positive progress made in the past and polished it even further. Back in the day, on-page optimization was based on keyword density (percentage of keyword repetition within the text). Given that this led to several SEO malpractices such as unreadable content, Google had to invent something that will improve user experience (UX).

Of course, semantic search and understanding user intent are great. However, the true value of this AI system lies in its learning capabilities. Even with all the synonyms and related keywords, Google still had issues understanding certain queries. In some cases, it gave improper value to certain words, prioritizing parts of the phrase instead of keywords as a whole. With RankBrain, Google is able to understand slang and questions that were previously ambiguous. This system is excellent for long-tail keywords. Furthermore, when processing new queries, it is able to make sound predictions based on previously accumulated information.

There is another thing that needs to be mentioned. Back in the day, during Hummingbird era, when you enter something in search tab you would get results that are same or similar to phrase which you entered. After RankBrain, when you type in something, you get direct answer to a question even if it doesn't have direct connection to the words which you typed in the bar.

Example:

• Hummingbird – Search: “How old is Will Ferrell?” Result: “Will Ferrell – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”

• RankBrain – Search: “How old is Will Ferrell?”, Result: “48”

One thing is for certain, as the initial description implies, RankBrain represents a system that is able to learn and improve as the time goes by. With this in mind, it can only get better when it comes to assisting Google users even without further polishing.

HOW DOES RANKBRAIN AFFECT SEO?

Given its name, you could presume that this system is in direct connection with ranking signals. In recent Google Q&A, we learned that RankBrain is now one of the three main Google ranking factors together with content and links. But, there is a lot of debate in SEO world about this. Many experts see RankBrain, not as a direct ranking factor, but instead as something that affects queries and through them, the search as a whole.

RANKBRAIN AND YOUR CONTENT

In a way, we can observe it from the same perspective as the Hummingbird. As long as you are creating normal, natural content, you will be visible to Google. But, according to our predictions, it probably won't have a drastic impact on on-page optimization.

Why is that? Simply put, this update helps people who are searching for certain results, but it shouldn't affect articles themselves given that semantic search is in place for some time now.

For example, if your article is optimized around word “pet food”, previously, visitors could have reached your page by typing things such as “pet products”, “animal food”, “things for my cat” etc. With RankBrain, Google will most likely be able to lead visitors to your page even if they put some obscure things such as “the stuff that cat puts in its mouth”. In that regard, your mission as an author doesn't change.

We can safely presume that Google will become smarter. At this point in time, this is pretty much a fact. Nevertheless, LSI keywords concept will most likely remain in place as the best way to convey an idea to the search engine. Given that RankBrain will be used to understand language patterns, slang as well as to connect the dots within the content, its main purpose would be to help Google user. Nevertheless, copywriters will still have to concentrate on semantics and general meaning of the text if they wish to be visible.

HOW DOES RANKBRAIN ACTUALLY LEARN?

This is the million dollar question. Google is usually very secretive when it comes to its technology (which is to be expected). But, we can speculate that click-through rate, time spent on a website and bounce rate will become the most important indications which will help Google determine whether a certain article is good fit for a certain query.

Another thing to note; RankBrain doesn't only help with slang and long phrases. It also helps with keywords that have numerous meanings. In that regard, as it starts learning through click-through rate, time spent on a website and bounce rate, it will most likely give advantage to queries that have more monthly searches (Apple computer instead of apple fruit). This can pose quite a problem for those who are working with less searched keywords. Nevertheless, as it always goes, people will look for an answer until they find the wanted result.

Now, we can suggest some SEO tricks such as great titles or intriguing META descriptions that will attract some of these floating visitors. However, given the RankBrain's learning potential, this will most likely be a temporary thing as it eventually starts leading people to websites with the most relevant information for their query. In other words, user will have to ask something really unusual and obscure given that the system already has answers to the most common questions. Besides, do you really wish to have visitors who are not interested in your topic?

HOW DOES RANKBRAIN SEE MEANING BEHIND THE WORDS?

At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that RankBrain understands connections between the terms through system of vectors. This is an example which was provided to us by Google.

As you can see, it shows us the connections between countries and their capital cities. However, this is only the part of the story. Relationships between the countries are much more interesting. On this graph, you can see Mediterranean countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and France grouped together. Similarly, France, Germany and Poland are close to each other (given that they are in the center of Europe) where Germany and France are close to each other (most likely due to mutual physical borders as well as close diplomatic and economic relationship between two countries).

As RankBrain starts processing all the articles and news feed on the Internet, AI system is able to notice patterns and realize similarities between different countries.

So, how does this apply in practice?

Let's take keyword apple as an example. We all know that this word can be used for both fruit and technological company. As such, it can pose a real problem for users. We tried with two different queries:

• What is apple?

• What is an apple?

In both cases, first thing that popped up was linguistic definition of the apple. It described the fruit. However, in case of “what is apple?” query, search engine gave us information about the company. On the other hand, “what is an apple?” gave us numerous results with the fruit. Given that most people, who search for apple, search for data regarding tech company, it was only logical that plain, basic form will give us results about the Apple Inc. On the other hand, Google recognized that “an” and “apple” usually go together when we talk about the apple tree so it showed us results about the fruit.

There is additional interesting innovation that is introduced with this machine learning system. According to Google, RankBrain will distinguish queries based on location. Ok, this is not a new concept given that even previously, results varied slightly depending on the place where you are living. However, this difference will be even greater when some results get removed, as RankBrain deems them irrelevant for a certain country or region.

 

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A RankBrain Guide for Everyone

6 SEO KPIs to Review (or Start Tracking!)

A single metric like keyword rankings cannot wholesomely describe the results of your digital marketing strategy. In order to see the “big picture” the key is to test multiple metrics, generally referred to as key performance indicators (KPIs).

Metrics, or KPIs, represent the hard numbers extracted from your website data. The majority of this data can be obtained using tools like the basic Google Analytics or more advanced tools.

Today, we are going to highlight the six SEO metrics you should review to get a better understanding of the overall health and performance of your website.

1. KEYWORD RANKING: HOW ARE PEOPLE FINDING ME?

Once upon a time, Google was a kind and gentle search engine that provided SEOs with keyword ranking and traffic data. Simply log in to Google Analytics and you could see exactly what people were searching to find your site. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. If you connect Search Console and Analytics you will get some keyword data, but nothing like before. Tracking keywords is more important for that reason as it will enable us to determine:

Whether you're focusing on the right keywords – if none of your blog post rank for their target keywords, then you need to focus on less competitive keywords or building more authority.

Whether you're growing with time – all keywords should slowly improve their ranking as you acquire back links and the site gains more trust. If this is not the case, then something is definitely wrong with your SEO plan.

Whether you're moving “link juice” well – the easiest way to test this is by creating a new blog post and linking to it from other pages on your site. If you have a strong domain, you should see a quick boost in the initial positioning for your keywords and in the case of long-tail terms, you can even rank in the top three with only internal links if your site has enough juice flowing through it.

2. LINKING ROOT DOMAINS: YOU HAVE DA JUICE?

It is obvious that search rankings have become more dependent upon the on-page SEO factors in addition to user interaction patterns but even so, one of the most important factors currently is back links. They play a major role in ranking and will continue to dominate in the near future. This means that your SEO strategy needs to include link building if you want to become an authority in your industry.

Regardless of how you decide to obtain new links, you need to make sure you have identified and are tracking key metrics life trust flow, domain authority, and topical relevance. Not only should you track these metrics but they should be instrumental in planning your link building strategy.

3. ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC: WILL THEY COME?

Is your organic traffic increasing month over month? Are the above actions leading to more visitors to your website? A free tool like Google Analytics is all you need to track organic traffic so you have no excuse not to do so. Aside from looking at your organic growth, take some time to find out where else traffic is coming from. Did that last link you got placed to your site send a boat load of traffic? Make a note of it and look for similar link ops.

4. AVERAGE TIME ON PAGE: DO THEY LIKE IT?

What do visitors actually do when they get to a page they don't like or are not interested in? They exit promptly. On the other hand, if the page is relevant and interesting to the visitor, they are likely to spend more time on it.

Your main goal should be to entice your visitors with quality content that keeps them engaged. The longer they spend on a page the more time you have to tell them a story, show them your value, or intrigue them to take an action resulting in a conversion.

It's important to note that even social networks are taking time on page into consideration within their algorithms (who sees your posts without paying for a boost), so it should be clear that relevant, high-quality content is something to strive for.

5. PAGES PER VISITOR: DRIVING THEM INTO YOUR FUNNEL?

Earlier we touched on internal linking and how it creates a flow of link juice, giving power to newly published pages on your site. The other benefit of internal linking is to help site visitors find information they want or need that supplements information found on the page they're on. If you notice that visitors are not visiting more than one page, you should reconsider how your internal links are being setup and how you can make them more valuable to your visitors.

Two effective ways to entice more internal pages views are:

• Adding a related post section to the sidebar or bottom area of your blog post.

• Adding more internal links to each article, specifically using terms or acronyms that may not be familiar to the reader as the anchor text.

6. RETURNING USERS: DID YOU MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION?

A lot of businesses invest heavily into getting visitors to their content for the first time. Once you have them on your page, you need to follow through by providing content and resources that are exceptional.

While taking the extra time or dedicating resources to creating better quality content may seem counterproductive to some, it can actually save you money or at least increase your customer lifetime value when you keep them coming back for more. This is not a metric you hear discussed a lot but there is not a truer opinion of your content than rather or not they decide to come back for more. If your return traffic is low, you are either in an industry that is an exception to this rule or you need to take a long, hard, look at your content.

If you are not tracking these metrics and looking for ways to improve each of them, your SEO plan could use some work. It is easy to get caught up in rankings but at the end of the day, SEO is a go to marketing strategy because it delivers an ROI second to none. Is your campaign delivering? If not, start with the KPIs above to find the culprit.

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