How to use this Page

by Karen Cioffi

What exactly is a landing page?

According to Hubspot.com, “A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor's information through a lead form.”

Copyblogger.com says, “A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result.”

So, landing pages are designed for specific purposes, such as a selling page for a product or service or for an email opt-in. But, no matter what the purpose is, it must be focused.

The page itself can be a separate website or a page on an existing website. But, since you want it completely focused, without distractions, a separate website usually works better.

It’s this landing page focus that allows for better conversion.

An effective landing page is designed and focused on a target market. This means if your site pertains to a specific cancer or illness, your content, opt-in, and any products you’re selling should focus on people dealing with this particular health issue. That’s your target market. And, your keywords should also reflect the page’s purpose.

If your site is about baseball, the same holds true. The landing page design, content, and any products or services being offered must pertain to baseball.

The landing page is kind of like a path on which there’s no way to stray off or be distracted. It’s intended for visitors to read exactly what you want them to, guiding them to say YES to your offer. There are no other pages for them to click on and hopefully no sidebar to be distracted by.

While inbound marketing strategies will get the visitor to your landing page, it’s the copy or content that will motivate him to follow the path and be responsive to saying YES.

Your content needs to be conversational, effective, and provide the WIIFM (what’s in it for me). People are overwhelmed with the amount of information being bombarded at them and with all the offers for books, ebook, and products. You need to write copy that (1) quickly lets the reader know what you’re offering, (2) lets the reader know exactly what the benefits are, and (3) lets the reader know what you want her to do.

Landing pages are no place for guessing games. They need to be fine-tuned, to the point, and simple. The more hectic you make the page, the more anxiety it will cause the reader. Anxiety isn’t good for conversion. Simple always works best.

You should also create separate landing pages for different offers or purposes. In other words, you don’t want to explain why a visitor should opt into your mailing list on your book selling landing page. And, you shouldn’t sell books on your subscriber opt-in page. Focus is a key element to motivating or leading a visitor to go through the necessary steps to saying YES to whatever it is you’re offering.

Bringing traffic to landing pages is done through inbound marketing strategies, such as email campaigns, special offers, guesting posting, and press releases. Other inbound marketing techniques include pay-per-click, ad banners, social networks, and affiliates.

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Do you want to extend your marketing reach as an author? Sign up now for Karen Cioffi's class, Creating and Building Your Author Online Presence: Website Creation to Beyond Book Sales, which starts Monday, January 7, 2013.

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If you've ever searched your site on Google and then sat in wonder trying to figure out what page it was on, take heart. Many site owners are wondering the same thing. Search results ping back hundreds of sites, but when you find yours showing up on page five--or worse--page fifty, you know it's time to take action. Studies have shown that 93% of web users don't look past the first page of results. So what's a website owner to do? Well, there are a few things that are out of your control: algorithms for one and competing sites for another. But you can make sure your site is armed for effective ranking and high searchability. Here's how.

1. Make sure you have an analytics system and know how to use it: first and foremost you want to make sure that you have access to your back end statistics. Why? Because they're important and because you want to know how much traffic your site is getting and where it is coming from. Also, learn how to read these reports. I would recommend considering Google analytics, it's the easiest to learn, manage, and install. [Editor's note: check out Anne-Marie Nichols's article on WOW! for step-by-step instructions on using Google Analytics: Blog Analytics 101: How to Use Google Analytics Effectively.] You'll want to monitor this data a few times a month (especially if you're knee-deep in book promotion) to see where your traffic is coming from and whether the work you are doing to send people to your site is paying off in unique visitors.

2. What is the one major goal for the site? Do you know what you want your site to do? If you don't, then start here and make this your #1 priority. You must have one major goal for the site (yes, you can have additional goals for it but you need to identify your #1 priority first). If your goal is to sell books then you need to be clear about this message. Why is Google going to care about this? Because part of the reason some sites don't get consistent good traffic or ranking is that their site is a mish-mash of 9 different major goals and confusing messages. If your site visitor is confused, Google will be too.

3. Keywords: I know this is a tricky area. The term "keywords" often conjures up the idea that hours of research are involved in getting the perfect set of words. Well, it make take you a few hours but it's worth it. You want to know this not only to identify what your users are searching on but also, what words Google will rank you best for. Identify first where your major searches are coming from via your back-end site statistics, then head on over to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and see what's coming up in your market search-wise. Once you have these keywords you'll want to use them on your site. See #4.

4. Use of keywords: there is a good way to use keywords and a bad way. The good way is to use them in sentences, headers, blog posts, articles, Twitter postings. The bad way is to do keyword stuffing, which is where you stuff a blog post or intro paragraph on your site with so many keywords that not only does that paragraph not make sense, the keywords won't even get ranked in Google because there are so many of them used in a non-sensicle way. I'm not kidding. Google can spot keyword stuffers a mile away. Here's a tip if you're using keywords in a blog post--use them in your header, first paragraph an

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