SEO TIP: Don’t Just Look At Your Landing Pages

“Why aren’t my landing pages ranking for certain keywords?”

That’s probably the most common question in SEO, and it’s not always easy to answer. We usually respond by asking clients why they want to rank for a given term; are they sure that their audience is using that term? Will the people searching for that keyphrase end up making a purchase, speaking with a salesperson, or reading an article?

But for the purposes of this article, we’re going to assume that you’ve gone through all that. You know where you want to rank, you’ve chosen your keywords carefully, and you’re not getting results.

What’s wrong with your landing page? What do you need to tweak to build a successful approach to SEO?

For starters, you’re only looking at the landing pages.

That’s a problem.

Here’s why: Google looks at your entire website in order to establish its semantic profile (semantics are words similar to the keyphrase, or related to the keyphrase, but fundamentally different). The more you write about a certain topic, the more authoritative your website seems.

As an example, consider two websites with roughly equivalent landing pages. They’re shooting for the search keyword “dog food.” One site has a single page about dog food; the other has 100. Even though the landing pages are equivalent, why wouldn’t the search engine prioritize the site with more content? It offers more resources for readers; it likely has more relevant links, more related keywords (think “nutrition in dog food,” “low-calorie dog food,” “canine chow,” etc.) and a better overall experience for searchers.

You might have the perfect landing page, but if it’s the only page on your site that uses a certain keyphrase, it probably won’t rank. Why should it? A website with dozens of high-quality, relevant pages should always beat a website with a single relevant page.

Use that principle to guide your SEO plan.

Yes, your landing page needs to be perfect, but you’ll need to make sure that you’ve got other relevant pages to improve your site’s semantic profile.

Oh, and quality is crucial. You can’t just fill a bunch of pages with keywords; make them real resources that will help your audience get the information they need. Cover broad topics and niche topics. To go back to our dog food example, you might write blogs like:

• What To Know About Raw Diets for Dogs
• What Nutrition Do Dogs Need?
• Why Dogs Are Natural Omnivores
• Choosing A Food For A New Puppy

Don’t worry as much about fitting in keywords. Worry about making useful, functional articles. Ideally, you’ll write 400-600 words on each topic, but if you can get a few thousand words in without stretching, do it. As long as you’re providing quality content, you’re spending your time well.

SEO is a long process, and you’ll still have to pay plenty attention to your landing pages. Our point is simply that your landing page isn’t the only factor in your ranking for a certain keyword. Look at your entire site and consider whether you’re truly offering the best result—after all, that’s exactly what Google’s doing.