Landing Page Makeover Clinic #1: SEOmoz.org

Landing Page Makeover Clinic #1: SEOmoz.org

Reader Comments (76)

  1. This is a 5 star post. Worth printing and putting in a binder.

    I constantly struggle with landing pages. This article is what I needed.

    Thank You !

  2. This is the first case-study of a real life landing page optimization that I’ve seen. Very helpful for someone like me who is trying hard to build subscribers.

    Thanks for this.

  3. Great post! Step 7 was a great reminder to me (I’m revising a landing page this week), and Step 8 (“Eliminate the passive 3rd person voice from your copy”) should be burned right across the top of every copywriter’s monitor.

    More gold.

  4. Good article, though I was surprised at the suggestion of going with a 2-column layout. When I think “effective landing page,” I tend to think about a single-column layout.

  5. So… will we ever know if your suggestions actually increase their conversions, or is this just all theory?

    I’m not putting down the post which is a great read, just that with my experience, what you think will happen when you make a change to a landing page, and what really happens, are often two separate things.

  6. Soโ€ฆ will we ever know if your suggestions actually increase their conversions, or is this just all theory?

    David, stay tuned… next Monday we’ll have an announcement that will provide you access to that very information.

  7. No fear! From time to time, I’ll be doing follow-ups with all the Clinic participants for sharing here — because ultimately, it’s all about the numbers.

  8. This post offers a series of great improvements. The only things I’d change as far as the recommendations go is to make sure the value is represented (both content-wise and visually) in the upper-left region of the landing page; this is the place visitors will almost always look first. Put a great testimonial or review in the upper right corner, then immediately under that give them the ability to opt-in right away. Then you can single-column it the rest of the way, prioritizing the most important information, and then staggering additional opt-ins as the page scrolls down.

  9. Roberta and Brian,

    Congratulations on this excellent post and this really useful service. As a regular SEOmoz reader, I am glad you could shed some light as to how they can increase conversions.

    Expect to be inundated with requests (mine included) ๐Ÿ˜‰

  10. What has happened with SEOBook’s conversion rate, btw? I’m a regular reader of his blog and at some time Aaron Wall said that the results from his PPC campaign looked promising, but that hed need to collect more data to have a statistically significant sample…but that’s been quite a while ever since?

    And well he has stuck with your new copy for SEOBook..have you guys forgotten about it?^^ or still not enough data?

  11. That is a wealth of information. I will definetly be applying some of these steps to my websites. Thanks a lot!

  12. And well he has stuck with your new copy for SEOBook..have you guys forgotten about it?

    Patrick, Aaron did do testing and concluded that his conversions went up after switching to the new copy, which is why it’s still in use. ๐Ÿ™‚ What matters most to Aaron is sales, of course. I’m not a liberty to divulge his sales figures, but he now makes more than he ever has from his book, and his current daily sales figures would make your jaw drop.

  13. Spot on! Having been to SEOMOZ many times, I can agree with this article. I always felt a little muddled, though I knew there was some good stuff in there somewhere, if I could just get past the distractions. I am interested to see which points get implemented over time.

  14. Having searched Google for something along the lines of email marketing stats, i came across a number of sites independently highlighting that Newsletters work better than single point of sale emails…

    im currently working on an interim site to support adwords and am using a very similar method for these landing pages.

    Another point to take is that Google doesnt like stand alone pages and you should have a link to and from the landing page to another page on the site (email campaign archive?)

  15. Good points! Although I read SEOmoz reguralry, this landing page was never convincing me to join – to busy, no clear call for action, no testimonials and just to much text below. I am wondering how soon we will see the new landing page and maybe they will also share with us their new conversion rates or at least some figures that will show the improvement.

  16. And one more thing, I don’t know if you have the same, but sometimes I forget that a landing page that has a nice design does not necessarily have to work (only because it looks pretty).

  17. Another point to take is that Google doesnt like stand alone pages and you should have a link to and from the landing page to another page on the site

    What Google doesn’t like is single page domains that are essentially just sales letters with no links to other content. SEOmoz.org has thousands of pages of content, and over a million incoming links, so I think their Google Quality Score will be just fine based on the trust the domain carries.

  18. Hello Brian-

    You did not address one crucial thing- in my book- is that the long list of testimonials all come from men. Is there not any women subscribers? Maybe it would be good to include one???

    Otherwise, the post was well thought out.

  19. I agree – a great post! I’ve been a fan of SEOMoz for more than a year. Great specific suggestions, many which I need to implement on sites I manage. I especially liked the suggestion of changing text/background color from white on black to black on white. I’ve never been fond of the white on black look, it’s just too hard to read!

  20. Great stuff! Awaiting to see the outcome once implemented by SEOmoz. Seems they have incorporated some of them eh?

  21. nice post but I think you needed a few more examples of exactly what you’d do. much of this can be read elsewhere, I was hoping for more specifics since this is a makeover.

  22. I agree with ^^^ Google Tutor and There is great info here! However, it seems to be cookie cutter and can basically be applied to everyones landing page.

    You need to chop and show us a layout b4 and after.

    Also this “Fold” thing, it’s on my nerves, 500pix is old school and real close to being out dated! I would like to hear peoples thoughts on that!

  23. Hoola and Google Tudor, contrary to popular opinion, not everything is free.

    However, in this case, you’re in luck. This coming Monday you’ll find out what phase two is with regard to the SEOmoz landing page and how it will be modified and tested.

  24. Nice, I look Forward to it. Brian, you made some really strong points. It appears on paper that these will work better than the page is currently, should be interesting.

  25. This was a great post. Thanks for sharing and starting this project. In my opinion, I feel that two of the most high leaverage response items were missed – Trust/ testimonial and offer need to be better highlighted on the the landing page. They should not be one page away. With landing pages, the tried and true aspects of Direct Marketing still hold. In our experience, the following are the highest leaverage items in that order:
    – Relevance of the landing page to the outbound medium (40%)
    – Offer and offer presentation (Navigation, forms etc. ) (40%)
    – Creative (20%)

    Thanks for starting this conversation as I believe the landing pages are going be the response vehicle of choice for all marketing.

  26. Hi Brian,

    that’s why I mentioned that “he stuck with it”. The fact that he did made me assume that it must be working out or else he wouldn’t be sticking with it.

    I just read his blog post on the sales letter again and realized he said the sample from his adwords traffic “had been” too small..so when he wrote that blog post, obviously it was big enough eventually..I sort of confused that.

    However, I was a bit surprised that I never really read anything more about it..I guess thats why I assumed he hadnt come to a final conclusion and asked if you guys had forgotten about it hehe ;).

    I doubt his sales figures would make my jaw drop, though..Im pretty aware of the fact that he’s making a killing out therelol.

  27. Brian, best post ever, in my opinion. Really. Specifics are everything and you went out of your way to make a spectacular landing page.

    For my blog though, which is your copyblogger theme, are those tips still relevant for a blog?

    The above the fold , take away all other navigation advice? seems like it’s different for a blog then a websiteโ€ฆ

  28. Very valuable.

    This call-to-action can be used for almost any product or website.

    The idea is the get the user to perform a goal or conversion and your outline is right on!

    Good job.

  29. It says a lot for you when a site like seomoz agrees to subject itself to your review. Congrats. I wish I had link bait that worked half as well as yours.

  30. I’ve been following Seomoz for a long time now and am actually surprised this is the chosen landing page.

    While I love this article, I’ve just never been able to get into to these long landing pages but if it works, it works! Nice work.

  31. I love your approach with the easily digestible top 10 list critique. SEOmoz do a lot of things very well and this shows how critical it is to have the impartial set of experienced eyes on everything you build.

    Nicely done.

    Oli

  32. This guideline was very helpful for me when I recently designed and developeda a new SEM landingpage in order to sell those new smartphones. So thanks a lot.

  33. Great points on how to improve landing pages. It continues to surprise me that many/most adwords campaigns still direct traffic to a company’s main website/url rather than to a targeted or even custom landing page. Companies that embrace the idea of providing unique content for different ppc keyword campaigns, and use the good structure you suggest in this article, will experience a much higher conversion rate with their click-through traffic.

  34. Hi Roberta,

    Very good article! I liked it because…
    1. It was clear
    2. It was concise
    3.It was relevant to my needs
    In summary, I have used your techniques to become a better comment writer in order for me to make money on my blog in easy way. ๐Ÿ™‚ Anyways, Thanks for pointing this out. It will help me a lot and to other bloggers out there.

    Warm Regards,
    blogger011
    Andy Beal, MarketingPilgrim.com 
    Blog Success – Get Traffic and Make Money Blogging

  35. I have successfully used many of these recommendations to improve landing pages for different adwords domains. These tips do work, the reasoning behind them is correct, the real life tests back that up.

  36. This was a great post. Thanks for sharing and starting this project. In my opinion, I feel that two of the most high leaverage response items were missed โ€“ Trust/ testimonial and offer need to be better highlighted on the the landing page. They should not be one page away. With landing pages, the tried and true aspects of Direct Marketing still hold.

This article's comments are closed.