Primary Keyword for Any Landing Page

A primary keyword is an essential component for any web landing page.  Optimization of the page around a primary keyword maximizes free search engine traffic and improves overall performance.

Landing Pages

A landing page is any page where visitors first enter your website.  It is promoted with offline marketing, online link building, and search engine optimization.  People need to find your landing page and be motivated to take action once they do. 

Every landing page intending to attract traffic must have a primary theme—it's mission statement—synthesized into a single search phrase.  The page's purpose is to impress people and search engines as the "best" source of information about that term.  When building landing pages, choose the primary keyword first, then create content to support it. 

Landing pages specific to a marketing campaigns not dependent on search results benefit by maintaining a consistent message. 

Small and local businesses most important landing page is their home page; it is the page is most critical to online marketing success.  An effective home page succinctly yet completely describes the business to humans, is optimized for search engines, and converts visitors to prospects and customers.

Keywords

Keywords are the internet's glue.  New prospects will find your landing page based on the page content evaluated in terms of keywords.  Keyword optimization of a page and site directly affects search engine results and indirectly affects advertising, social media, and visitor response.

Researching keywords is important; your landing pages should be optimized to rank for a broad range of thematically consistent keywords.  Uncover the important terms for attracting the highest volume of quality traffic taking into account search volumes, search result competition, and implied intent.

Use the keyword research results to validate or select you choice of primary keyword.  Optimize your landing page around it.

Why Do I Need A Primary Keyword?

Primary keyword focus contributes to effective design.

Basic page design decisions are simplified by knowing and targeting the keyword focus for that page.  The entire page is your best response to someone who just pressed "search" to your primary keyword.

The page needs to: communicate that it is the best one on the internet about this one specific search term, confirm to visitors that they are in the right place by strong feedback of the term and solid supporting information, then motivate them to take action.  With an appropriate and well chosen primary keyword, content describing your business, product, or service flows naturally within this framework.

A solid search engine result for one keyword outperforms mediocre results for several.

Free search engine traffic, also referred to as organic or natural search traffic, is usually the most desirable... and competitive.  Consequently, if free traffic is targeted, a key measure of the landing page's success is the search result position it achieves for its primary keyword.

Click through rates are exponentially dependent on the search result position.  Page one is essential for predictable traffic; position on page one critical to the volume of traffic.  Each page one organic result will receive 1.2 to 1.4 times the clicks as the listing directly below it.

Total traffic is maximized by focus on achieving the best possible search engine result position for the most appropriate keyword rather than attempting to generate search results for multiple terms. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) benefits from specific page placement of the primary keyword

In evaluating web pages search engines assign weighted importance to page elements.  Locations such as the title, header, the last paragraph and description are consistently weighed heavily.  These locations are ideal for primary keyword placement immediately assuring human visitors of arrival on page addressing their search implied needs.  Consequently search engines pay special attention to words and phrases placed in these areas.

What about complementary and secondary keywords?

Complementary and secondary search terms are not sacrificed as one might imagine, they often perform better with solid page optimization promoting thematically consistent topics and keywords in support of the primary keyword.  It goes full circle, since the primary keyword best describes the page within the context of internet searches, the page designed to support the primary keyword will effectively describe the topic creating a positive experience for search engines and humans.

Always have a primary keyword

Make the commitment:  this page is about one specific primary keyword and optimized for it!