A Guide to Landing Page SEO A/B Testing

Originally posted on https://www.samsonwebdesign.co.uk/a-guide-to-landing-page-seo-a-b-testing/

Many compnaies use A/B testing to optimise their conversion rates.

Most businesses now advertise online and to stand out from the pack you need a website that delivers a memorable user experience.

It goes without saying that you must place a special focus on the landing page when crafting your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. A landing page is the first page that a visitor to your site is directed to.

Here is an extensive landing page SEO primer to help you reel in users.

A/B testing is a marketing strategy where you compare two similar versions of your landing page with one item altered on the variation.

Many times A/B testing gets confused with another SEO strategy known as split-testing.

Unlike an A/B test, a split test is where you compare two versions of your landing page that are completely different from each other.

For example, if you are A/B testing your landing page you might decide to change one aspect of the test version like a call to action (CTA) button.

With split testing, you will be comparing two completely different versions of the landing page.

When you are running a landing page AB testing experiment, you need to have a baseline control version of your landing page that won’t change. It is this control landing page that is called version A.

You then need a second landing page, known as version B, on which you make slight tweaks on a particular feature.

For every tweak you make on version B, you will compare against version A and analyse the results.

If you are unfamiliar with A/B testing you would be forgiven for thinking that it sounds overly complicated with vague benefits.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are tangible benefits to your SEO strategy when you run A/B tests on your landing page. The following are some of them.

As a business, you might have conducted extensive research to understand the customers you serve.

While such research is necessary, you still have to keep studying your customer’s interaction with your website.

Running A/B tests on your landing page will let you know what features your customers best respond to.

With this information in hand, you can design an effective landing page to increase the number of visitors who turn into buyers.

Even though your desire as a business is to see every visitor follow through on your CTA and convert, that is never the case.

When a visitor doesn’t make a purchase, it doesn’t mean that they are of no benefit to you.

Your landing page can be an essential interaction point to spread your message. For example, a visitor who doesn’t convert but who connects with your landing page will likely follow you on social media.

Running A/B tests will help you design a landing page that resonates with such visitors so that they end up keeping you in mind even if they don’t convert.

Running A/B tests can be time-consuming. You will be tweaking one element at a time and waiting to observe the results.

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want to run multiple A/B tests concurrently because you need to receive actionable feedback per element.

To get the best results, you need to know the landing page elements you must test.

Craft a compelling headline as that is the first thing your visitors will see.

A headline relaying a benefit or the combination of a problem and a solution will have high appeal.

Switch the wording a bit to lock in on the most effective ones like replacing a boring verb with an exciting one.

Your landing page’s copy is still as essential as the images and videos you will use.

It relays your offer, conveys information on your company and helps the visitor engage with your site.

Run A/B tests on your offer to find out which one resonates the most with your clients.

Just ensure that you use methods that will always deliver the same offer to the same group of users.

For example, if you offer group A a bonus while giving group B a free gift then you must ensure that group A always has the same visitors. The same goes for group B.

Users online gravitate to visual items like images and videos but that doesn’t mean that you have to use them.

Many landing pages work just fine with minimal texts and a lot of white space.

In light of this, one of the tests you should run is stripping all video and images from the landing page to gauge the response.

You can then proceed to incrementally add them as you monitor the feedback.

Your CTA is where you sell the visitor on your offer. Since it is the focal point of your pitch you need to test multiple aspects of it to come up with the right combination.

Compare your CTA’s copy, background and font colour or even the font size and style to realise what works best for your site.

The layout is how you choose to position all the elements in your landing page. You need to play around with how you arrange the content to identify the most optimal layout.

Keep in mind that although changes to your layout might seem simple they do have a significant impact.

Your website is a critical part of your online marketing mix.

The landing page is an essential part of attracting new visitors to your website. Therefore you need to optimise your landing page SEO strategy for maximum results.

Samson Web Design understands your need for a website that will deliver a high rate of conversions. Contact us today for website design that will generate more leads and ultimately sales.