5 Important SEO Criteria For Email Landing Pages

Landing pages for email campaigns have an important job. In this article, you will receive 5 important tips for the successful design of email landing pages. You want to convert traffic generated by mailings into leads and conversions.

In order for these pages to serve their purpose optimally, not only web design and content play an important role. Many marketers are less aware that aspects of search engine optimization contribute to the success of e-mail landing pages.

Why SEO is more than just search engine optimization

The abbreviation SEO is not translated for nothing nowadays to "Search Experience Optimization", because the discipline is now an integral part of online marketing.

Once SEO focused on optimizing the technical aspects of websites for search engines, today the positive user experience is at the centre of optimization.

Thus, SEO can provide important input for designing e-mail landing pages. The following five aspects should be considered:

1. Keyword focus

Search engine optimization means that each webpage is targeted to a single keyword or keyword combination. However, it is less about the increased use of one or more

keywords, but about the holistic processing of the term as a "theme" of the landing page.

For e-mail landing pages, this keyword focus is dictated by your mailing. It is therefore advisable to align the landing page using central search terms of the mailing.

Which type of terms you use depends on the landing page's target: If the information aspect of the landing page is more in focus, so-called "informational keywords" should

also be in the foreground. If the purchase aspect is to be more central, "transactional keywords" are required.

Typical "transactional keywords" are combinations of keyword and "buy", for example "buy shoes", "buy stocks". In contrast, "informational keywords" would be, for example, "making shoes" or "judging stocks."

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a useful way to find relevant keywords with the appropriate search volume. Other handy tools include Google Trends and Übersuggest.

2. Clear structure

The average Internet user spends little time capturing a website and reading its content carefully. Even search engine robots have only a certain time and data budget available for crawling web pages. For this reason, and from the point of view of the user experience, an important rule in search engine optimization is that websites should work with a clear headline structure.

These tips will help you to further design the landing page structure:

• Use a central headline. This headline should be given a h1 tag. In this headline, formulate the central statement of the landing page, paying attention to the keyword focus. Subsequent headings are tagged in chronological descending order.

• Use short paragraphs. With the help of paragraphs you can control the flow of reading visitors. For each paragraph only a new content aspect should be listed and dealt with.

• Emphasize important sentence components or terms. The emphasis draws attention to key messages. This makes it easier for the reader to grasp the meaning of their content.

3. Targeting content

Users and website owners alike benefit when content on websites provides added value. On the one hand, this satisfies the user's needs and on the other hand, it increases the

chance that the website will win rankings. After all, search engines reward high-quality content with better rankings.

So that your visitors do not jump off when they visit your landing page, the same rules apply. Your content needs to satisfy the user's needs.

Possible reasons for a high bounce rate:

• Users cannot find what they were looking for on the page.

• The site offers no added value for users.

• The contents are difficult to grasp in terms of language.

In comparison to conventional websites, landing pages should prompt visitors to act. The same applies to e-mail landing pages. For example, content can be augmented with

call-to-action elements to increase page interaction.

Content is not just text but also images, videos or graphics. But their use also requires some guidelines that should be considered.

• Add alt tags to each image. These tags are displayed if the images cannot be loaded in the user's browser. So the user has a way to "read" the pictures without a picture. At the same time your landing page will be a bit barrier-free.

• Note the picture sizes. Images should always be embedded in text. Also, try not to include important text elements as visuals.

• Place the central graphic as a "hero shot". In this way, you immediately draw the attention of the visitor to the important aspects of your landing page.

4. Slow loading times

When a user clicks on a search result from a search engine, it only gives the landing page a few seconds to load. The attention span for the page layout is usually just under three seconds, beyond that half of the visitors leave the page again.

This aspect can be transferred 1: 1 to e-mail landing pages. When a user clicks on a link in the mail, he expects the landing page to load quickly. In order not to lose any visitors, you should note the following tips for a quick page setup:

• Reduce the source code to the essentials. Avoid unnecessary comments or spaces.

• Compress pictures and graphics. Compression takes less time to load. It is recommended to use .jpg files in order to be able to compress without loss of quality.

• Use techniques like browser caching. This places important elements of the website in the cache of the browser. They do not have to be reloaded on another page view.

• Paste CSS or JavaScript and save the files. By offloading and merging into a file, the page can build up without the browser having to wait for all CSS files and scripts to load.

You can check how fast your landing page loads with the free Google PageSpeed tool.

5. Mobile optimization

More and more people go online with their smartphones these days. Marketing managers should therefore ensure that mailings and newsletters are configured for retrieval on mobile devices.

But what happens when users are directed to a landing page that is not mobile optimized? In this case, similar reactions to expect as with conventional websites: A large number of users jumps, the bounce rate increases. The success of the mailing is reduced.

Therefore, when designing landing pages, make sure that they are optimized for mobile use. Today, Dynamic Serving, Responsive Web Design or Mobile-Optimized Subdomains offer

a variety of options. Common practice for most websites is Responsive Web Design.

Further tips for mobile optimization:

• Adjust the head area to smaller displays.

• Choose font sizes so that texts can be read easily even on small displays. It is advisable anyway to specify the font size relatively, so that it adapts automatically

to the display size.

• Restrict the use of multimedia elements. These files require extra loading time.

• Avoid using hover menus in the navigation. They complicate operation via touch displays.

Conclusion

Successful e-mail landing pages are not solely dependent on the skills of web designers or copywriters. Even if the newsletter software uses the latest technologies, important, promising approaches are missing without central aspects of search engine optimization.

After all, e-mail landing pages work on many levels like traditional websites: They should ensure the best possible user experience, because it ultimately contributes to more

conversions. Those who want to build successful landing pages should therefore focus on the consideration of central SEO basics.