How You Can Choose a Great URL For Your Landing Page

Copywriting...Design...Forms...Call To Action Buttons...Your offer...

When you're setting up a new landing page, all of these components matter. You have to pay attention to them. The great news is that when done right, they can help you create powerful landing pages that send your online marketing results through the roof. When not done right, they can cause your results to plummet.

The Lander blog is full of articles loaded with valuable content to help you optimize the performance of your landing pages, so today we won't go into detail on these important aspects of a quality landing page.

But here's what we will discuss...

Here's something you may not have thought of when setting up your landing pages: the importance of your choice of URL A well-chosen landing page URL can give a boost to your online marketing in two different ways:

Can help your landing page rank higher in search engine results. Can help you convert more landing page visitors into buyers.

Done poorly, it can be a true “weak link” in your marketing “chain”, resulting in some lost sales opportunities.

So let's talk about how you can “do it right” when you are selecting your landing page URLs.

Keywords Still Matter...

Something a lot of website and landing page owners don't understand is that the choice of URL can affect the landing page's SEO performance. Remember that despite all of the changes Google has made recently to give SEO credit to good content and to penalize poor content, including content stuffed with keywords, keywords still matter.

Used properly, they can help a website or landing page rank higher in search results. They can help you when they are placed in the on-page content of the landing page, and they can help you when they are strategically placed in the URL.

Consider the following landing page URL examples. Let's assume they will take visitors to a landing page that has a reservation signup form for Luigi's Italian restaurant in San Francisco:

http://mywebsite.com/n=88010572&fid=1&mid

vs.

http://mywebsite.com/Italian-Restaurants-San-Francisco-Luigis

Notice how the second, customized landing page URL contains the search phrase “Italian Restaurants San Francisco”? If you owned “Luigi's” Italian Restaurant, think how having this URL could help you come up higher in search results more often.

Create URLs For Search Engines AND People

Put yourself in the place of someone searching Google for an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. Which of the above two URLs do you think is more likely to get clicked on? I think we can safely assume the second one will receive a lot more clicks, don't you agree?

Also, those who click through are more likely to already be “primed” to make a reservation for Luigi's Restaurant. They are online searching for an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. They've clicked the URL to visit Luigi's reservation landing page.

The second landing page URL example gives them a strong hint of what they can expect to see on the other side. I think it make sense to conclude this customized, keyword-rich landing page URL can help increase conversion rates!

In the above example, “Italian-Restaurants-San-Francisco-Luigis” is the page name. This is easy to change. When you are changing a landing page name for SEO purposes, remember two things:

Keywords: include them but don't “stuff” your landing page URL with them

Readability: speaking of not stuffing your URL with keywords, keep it short and easy to read – think 4-5 words total, not 12-15

Once more: when you are optimizing a webpage or landing page URL for SEO, remember to keep it short; avoid “spammy” keyword stuffing. To quote Matt Cutts of Google:

“If you have three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal...ask yourself: “How does this look to a regular user?” – because if, at any time, somebody comes to your page...and finds 15 words all strung together like variants of the same word, then that does look like spam...So, I would not make it a big habit of having tons and tons of words stuffed in there, because there are plenty of places on a page, where you can have relevant words and have them be helpful to users – and not have it come across as keyword stuffing.”

Not only could stuffing your URL with keywords cause an SEO backlash, it could also confuse and drive your potential customer to one of your competitors. Like we've said before on this blog, “confusion kills conversion”.

So another place, besides SEO, where keywords in a URL can have an effect (positive or negative) on your landing pages is with conversion. And please remember this: the purpose of a landing page is to convert. Think back to our example of the two URLs a moment ago:

http://mywebsite.com/n=88010572&fid=1&mid

vs.

http://mywebsite.com/Italian-Restaurants-San-Francisco-Luigis

Now imagine you are searching for an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. If you see these two URLs in a list of search results, you'll be more inclined to click on the second one, don't you agree?

And when you read the keyword-rich landing page URL text, you'll have a strong hint about the results you'll get, a solid idea about what you'll see on a landing page on the other side of that URL.

Do you see how this could help Luigi's reservation landing page on the other side of that URL experience a higher conversion rate?

Your choice of URLs can affect the SEO and conversion results you experience with your landing pages. You want these results to be in your favor. You want your landing page URLs to drive interested potential customers to you, not away from you to one of your competitors.

I trust this article has offered you some easy-to-implement advice to help you make your landing pages even more likely to convert.

An Online Marketing Tool You Don't Want To Live Without

Indeed, landing pages are a very important part of the online marketing process. You want the very best landing page platform available. As a busy marketer, entrepreneur or business manager, you want the easiest to set up landing page platform in the Universe!

You want a landing page platform that's super-simple to manage.

Since landing pages are so important to your online marketing success, you want a landing page platform engineered to help you enjoy increased conversion rates.

When you've worked hard and smart to optimize your landing page URL's for SEO and conversion, when you've incorporated persuasive copywriting and clean, uncluttered graphics (including relevant images), you want a landing page template that “pulls its own weight” and then some.

You want the extra benefits promised by a landing page software program loaded with stellar features. For your landing page needs, you want Lander. Here are just a few of the valuable features Lander offers you:

Advanced A/B testing capability

An eye-catching headline area to help you capture page visitors' attention

Built-in video support

Countdown timer integration

PayPal integration

Happy Marketing!