A landing page is a specific page where all the traffic is directed once a user clicks a link in search engine results, online ad or promotional email. It is the first page which your visitor see when reaching your website and it is not always the homepage of website. Landing pages play an important role when they are created with specific purpose to get sales or generate leads. The conversion ratio and success of an online campaign depends on how optimized your landing page is.

In this post, I am going to share some practices which will help you in creating a landing page that converts and sells well.

Setting a Goal for Each Page: Experts have different views on this. Some think that your landing page should be dedicated to only one offer but other think that there is no problem in adding navigational links or to mention about other offers.

The best way to find an answer to this is to experiment with both and find the solution which works best for your niche. It may vary niche by niche. Normally, if traffic to your landing page is coming from any PPC campaign then you should mention only one offer in your landing page. PPC traffic is very focused and looking for a specific thing.

Relevancy: The headline and title of the landing page should be relevant to the advertised offer. You should consider creating separate landing pages for each different keyword and offer. If a user clicked on an offer which claims to give 14 day free trial then don’t direct him to the landing page where he have to pay.

Compelling Headline: Make Your Headline bold and strong so that it can stand out from the rest of the page. Don’t use headlines like “ Learn how to earn online money” instead of that use compelling headlines like “ Learn How I earned 100,000 dollars in 30 days”. The second headline is more likely to get clicked and have a high Conversion rate.

Add Images: An image is equal to 1000 words, using a relevant image can convey your message quickly and effectively with very less effort. Image describing the product and your offers play a very important role in increasing the conversion rate.

Call to Action: The purpose of the landing page is to encourage visitors to get the desired action. The call to action link For eg: – Click here should be at the top of the landing page so that it could be easily visible to everyone. Putting your call to action link at wrong place can reduce your conversion rate a lot.

Building Credibility: Building Credibility with your customers is very important to sell your product to them. Adding short testimonials from likeminded people, awards and recognitions or putting logos from some reliable websites can build trust amongst your prospects about your website. Landing pages with testimonials and reviews always have high conversion rate as compared to others.

Keep it Simple: Try to keep your landing page simple. A complex landing page filled with images, videos or information about other offers is very distractive and don’t convert well.

Focused Content: The content on landing page should be highly relevant and focused completely on a single offer. Break big paragraphs in to short and highlight the important points so that they catch the user attention easily. Provide all important information and conclusions at the top of your landing page as users don’t wait long to read so far. Not so important or supportive information should be last.

Free Offers and Money-Back Guarantee: Always provide free offers related to your product as such offers will help your prospects to remember you and encourage them to buy from you whenever they need your product. If possible try to provide a money back guarantee with your product. These guarantees help in creating a risk free environment for your prospect to buy from you.

Contact Information: Always add your contact information with your image and a short profile at the end so that users can feel that your website is completely reliable and they are not going to buy from a scammer.

I have five core reasons:

1. Conversion: Building a relationship by adding value is one of the highest converting ways to make money online. Most people fail online because they do not spend the time building a relationship, they just go directly to convincing people to buy a product.

Blogging is conversational which makes it perfect for building relationships with readers. This will drive high conversions and help you build a long term business/brand.

Certainly you can build a relationship via e-mail by throwing up a landing page and capturing email addresses. But why would you want to publish all the content via email when you could have that content rank in the search engines and drive traffic to you?

2. Traffic: With a little work, building relationships with other bloggers will reap you traffic benefits for years and grow your subscribers. You want to associate yourself with other blogging experts in your field, which intern helps your brand evolve.

Getting out from behind your computer and picking up the phone can really help you build relationships with other bloggers. Also attending events is a great way too.

3. SEO: The SEO benefit is huge with blogging. By far the biggest factor that influences your blog’s search engine raking is links from other authority sites in your niche. By other bloggers linking to your blog it will make it much easier for your blog to consistently rank in the search engines.

Authority sites are not going to link to your 1 page affiliate site. Plus if you are marketing via PPC you can still build a landing page off your blog. Google will reward you with a much better quality score since your blog has lots of authority.

Updating content is another huge factor in your search engine placement. Blogging makes it easy to keep your content fresh which will have the search engines loving your blog.

And don’t forget about the SEO for WordPress plug-in that makes on page SEO for your blog a cinch.

4. Feeling Proud: Statistics show when you feel proud about your work you will be more successful. Blogging provide you the perfect opportunity to build a long term business and brand you can feel proud of.

You have a choice online, build a long term brand or jump from one short term affiliate opportunity to another. Either way you will spend lots of time. The difference is with building a blog you can create a long term business versus just a short term money making opportunity that will get copied by affiliates.

5. Technical Hurtle: I have noticed many people online fail because they get caught up with html and technical issues when creating a business website online. With blogging systems like WordPress, the technical hurtles to succeed are significantly reduced. This is a great reason to start blogging especially if you are not a techie.

I hope this helps you see why blogging is a great method for building your online business. Sure you have to write a bit, but in the long run building a long term business is much easier then jumping from niche to niche trying to make short term money!