It pays a lot to have an effective landing page when it comes to your SEO and PPC strategy. Directing traffic to your page would be one thing, but maintaining it would be another. That is why, as an SEO or SEM, you would want to ensure that you have a strong landing page to complement your traffic generating efforts. Consider these elements in order to make your landing page count:

Name of the URL:
The name of the URL should be relevant to the topic of your page. An irrelevant name may just cause a major shakeup for the page, causing it to lose some focus, and may affect its indexing by the search engine.
For example, you have a page dedicated to the best motorcycles of 2010. So the URL of your page, in order to be optimized, should go like this: http://…/best-motorcycles-of-2010.htm . Undoubtedly straight to the point, search engines won’t think twice about awarding your page a quality ranking.

Structure of the page:
The main purpose of the structure is to make it somehow revolve around the keyword you aim to rank for. This would encompass everything, from the text to the pictures to the design. Even the meta codes would play a part in this make-up. To put it shortly, the page should be built around the topic.

Pictures:
One can do this by increasing the use of alt tags. This is used in the syntax for images. Including this code in the embedding of pictures enriches the HTML of a site; and by plugging in a keyword in the whole code, it would enhance the site’s chances of being indexed.

If you have a website that sells baby clothes, you may consider putting the following alt tag in your photos: baby clothes. The appearance of “baby clothes” and other possible variants of it in the alt tags are sure to be picked up by search engines and can help in improving your rankings.

Header and Footer Optimization:
These are the first and last things people will notice when they’re on the site. So make sure that you work on them with web design, and inclusion of meta tags. Take into consideration how they factor into the site from those sections.

The most important points should go into these sections. If you have keywords to rank for organically, the main ones should occupy prominent places in these parts.

Every link goes to its own content:
Now that you’ve organized every link according to subject, the links should go to the content that describes them most ideally. Each topic in your site will be subdivided into subtopics, and the subtopics should also be in tune with the link it is assigned to.

If you are selling formal wear, certain links should just go to those referring to suits, others to ties, others to pants and so on. Of course they have to be interrelatedly linked but only at the general level as compared to their individual linking which should be dealt with specifically.

Three columns of content or large quick links:
Organizing content in such a way that it would be huddled up in a group in a page may be the key for you to rank high in searches. The more tightly knit in columns a topic or subtopic is put in, the better it is for it to be indexed and to land in the higher tier of searches.

Keyword tools for landing page relations:
Some keyword tools, apart from giving the ads and organic keywords, also give the landing pages that are linked. The landing page-keyword link strategies other keyword tools employ will also help you implement a similar strategy for your own page. KeywordSpy for example, discloses more specific information per ad copy with the Information (i) and KW buttons. These describe not only keywords pertaining to an ad, but also the landing page for an ad. Checking out how the page would appear in another browser window will show the make-up of the ad, and it will be your discretion if these are effective enough or not.

While linking to your page to get traffic is a challenge overcome by constant practice, encouraging people to stay on the site and turn their visits to their conversions require even greater practice on one’s part. This will seal the deal between you and the customer, so give it the value due it with your efforts.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO of KeywordSpy.com . You can find more information about him at PeterZmijewski.com .