Creating Landing Pages Worthy Of Getting Ranked #1
September 6th, 2007 by CourtLanding pages are pages that are engineered to target certain keyword phrases. For a traditional site, a landing page is simply an HTML page that has a keyword in all the right places. For a blog, a landing page might be a post or a page. There isn’t really any difference between a traditional site and a blog when it comes to landing pages.
Making a good landing page consists of several different factors including:
- Placing your keyword phrase in all the right locations.
- Making sure you pass enough authority to the landing page.
- Pointing links to and from the landing page using your keyword phrase as the anchor text.
Locations Where You Want Your Keyword Phrase To Appear
- HTML Title Tag - This is perhaps the most crucial location where you want the word to appear. If you code pages manually, you probably know how to change the HTML title. If you run a blog, placing your keyword in your post and page titles will automatically insert it into the HTML title.
- URL Of The Page - On a traditional site, you can use the keyword as the filename of the HTML page. On a blog, make sure your site is set to use keyword permalinks and place the keyword in the post or page title.
- The <h1> And <h2> Tags - These are meant to be headings that appear on the page. Blogs usually have the post titles set to use one of these tags to wrap the post titles. Regular webmasters can add them into the code manually like this: <h1>keyword phrase here</h1>. The h1 is meant to be the main heading, and should appear above the h2 tag on the page. (See my ‘secret traffic booster‘ post.)
- Within The Main Text Of The Page - A good landing page will normally have at least 400 words of text on it. Somewhere in that text you need to have your keyword appear at least once, but probably two or three times.
- In Links - See section on linking below.
Making Sure You Pass Enough Authority To The Landing Page
In order to get the landing page ranked, you will need to make sure that the page gets enough links to make it authoritative. You should edit three or four existing pages, creating links that point to the landing page.
To pass even more authority to the page, you can get relevant links from other sites. Techniques you can use to get links for the landing page include:
- Posting in forums with a link in your signature that points to the landing page.
- Writing articles and submitting them to article directories - again linking with your signature.
- Commenting on D-List blogs.
- Using other sites you own to link to the landing page.
- Emailing prominent sites in your niche to let them know about the post or page.
- Submitting the page to blog carnivals.
Pointing Links To And From The Page With Relevant Anchor Text
In order to get the best effect while you’re doing link building for the landing page, you should use your keyword phrase as anchor text for the links. When you link to your new landing page from other pages in your site, use the keyword phrase as text to make the link out of.
Using the keyword phrase to link to another site that has information on the keyword will also give you a benefit. Use your keyword as the anchor text of that link. In order to achieve the maximum benefit, you should link to a page that has the keyword in the URL. As easy way to do this is to look up your word on Wikipedia, linking to the Wikipedia page about that keyword. Wikipedia will usually have the keyword in the URL. Linking to pages that rank well for the keyword will provide more benefit.
There you have it! Now go make a legit landing page and wait for your traffic. 
Save to del.icio.us
Digg This!
Post to Facebook
StumbleItRelated Posts:
Introduction to Organic Landing Pages
...
Introduction to Lead Blogging
...
Better Rankings By Reconfiguring In-Site Link Popularity
...
How to Get a DOUBLE First Page Ranking on Google
...
5 Niched-Out Keywords For Lazy Alexa Boosting
...
Taking SEO To The Next Level - LSI
...
September 6th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Unfortunately there is one other technique: ezinearticles.com
So many crappy articles rank in the top 10 in Google just because they are on an authority site.
No one would ever link to them.
Maybe Google likes that since there are tons of Adsense ads on ezinearticles?
September 6th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
These are all things I need to be more aware of when I’m creating my blog posts. Thanks.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Thanks for the great article, Court. All of your advice are things I should keep in mind when writing. Usually I don’t focus as much as I should on SEO and getting ranked. That’s something I need to change and I’ll start with reference to this article.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:29 am
This is exactly the sort of post the world needs more of. I’ll take these tips and spruce my landing page up over the weekend. This, along with what Kumiko’s been doing, is advice you just can’t ignore.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:23 am
[…] I have always wondered how to be ranked well in search engine. I have some of my paid posts being rank on the first page, but not at the first placement. So, I am so glad that I caught this post from Dosh Dosh. […]
September 8th, 2007 at 6:27 am
[…] Creating Landing Pages Worthy of Getting Ranked #1 from Courtney Tuttle. […]
September 9th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[…] Tuttle gets a shout for his awesome post on landing pages. There have been a few posts about this topic recently, but Court’s one stands out because it’s […]
September 10th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Is there a lot of different categories when submitting to blog carnivals?
September 13th, 2007 at 3:15 am
First rate post Courtney
Another suggestion which seems to help is this:
In each post have you keyword appear in the first line and make it bold with the tags.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I knew about linking out with anchor text, but never knew that out linking to a high ranking page with the keyword in it helped. Guess I have some more experimenting to do. Thanks for sharing this great info.
August 25th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[…] Creating Landing Pages Worthy Of Getting Ranked #1 […]
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
I too never knew about linking out to a site with the keyword in it. I’ve always been concerned with trying to use as much link juice as possible for myself. I don’t yet blog, I’m talking about doing all this on traditional websites.
One thing that I didn’t see you mention is how many of these pages you feel should be used per site, or per some other metric.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:17 am
You know I have seen landing pages that seem to go on forever and ever. Not effective in my opinion. Landing pages need to be fairly short, powerful, able to catch the visitors attention within 5 seconds, with a call to action.
I appreciate the post! Great info…
May 20th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
What a great post. It is crucial to get a landing page correct so that it is a flow of information, much like a conversation. If the conversation isn’t posed correctly, people will be turned off and not enter in their information. Thanks for laying out the ways to create an effective capture page that will not only be liked by your visitors, but also the search engines!
August 24th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Wow, thanks for the information. I had no idea what a D-list was nor was I aware of “carnivals” for blogs. You have some great info on your blog! Thanks for the tips,
MD