Content landing pages are defined as landing pages on a website with a healthy amount of content, to move the reader through the marketing funnel.
The content on the page includes text, images, videos, and quizzes on the page. These have more content on them than an ads-centric landing page might and are often more in a blog post or informative article layout.
Content landing pages look this Powerwall vs Backup Generator page from Tesla:
It’s a piece of content that answers a compelling question, and the goal is to get the reader to take action.
In my opinion, it’s best to think of them as strictly middle-of-funnel content. Sure, they may be top-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel content sometimes, but if we think of them as at the consideration level of AIDA, then it helps frame the problem we’re trying to solve.
They can be very useful for marketers. Many say that copywriting is the #1 marketing skill. I’d argue that landing pages are the #2 skill. This includes landing page creation, measurement, testing, and analysis.
A landing page is a microcosm of an entire marketing campaign. It is the crux of a dedicated marketing campaign. There’s a lot that happens before a marketing campaign, and there’s a lot that happens after, but a landing page is like a traffic control system. You see the numbers coming in and out and you can adjust based on where you’re lacking.
A landing page perfectly encapsulates the marketing campaign’s audience, messaging, targeting, style, design, offer, and technology.
If a landing page that reflects your business services is not resonating – then that’s the feedback that the entire business service offer needs work.
Content landing pages can be paired with email, search (SEO), paid search (Google ads), and paid social ads (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, etc).
To start and test, they’re best paired with email.
Start with keeping your current audience interested and engaged. For messages that really resonate, you can scale further with ads. But to start, send it to your email list.
Using Content Landing Pages for Email Marketing Content
I think this is a very powerful combination: use interesting headline ideas, often a question or explainer, to drive the user from an email to the content.
For example, this email from Tesla caught my attention today:
Why?
4 distinct reasons, in this order of impact:
- I’m moving into a new home now with solar, and I’m already thinking of a Powerwall, so it’s front of mind for me.
- The Tesla name and brand always stands out, so since I’m already a customer and have a decent affinitity towards them, I’m more likely to open. The lesson here is that you should do brand marketing in parallel, even when focused on certain performance channels.
- The subject line: I like the “Here’s Why” format because it hints that it will teach me something, it has the Powerwall product keyword, and it’s comparing to a generator – which is another product I’ve vaguely wanted in the future.
- It’s also directly, overall, addressing a problem or question I’ve had and it’s always been in the back of my mind. So all together the content promises to answer a lingering open thread in my brain. This is a strong incentive to click.
So I’m compelled to open by the subject line; then the email is short and to the point; then the CTA button drops me right on the content landing page to read more.
It works.
It’s not complicated, but like Elon says, a simpler system is the goal. In this case it’s web content not rocket engines. But both are equally important right?
So they are great for email and nurturing existing customers. You can a/b test if you have a large enough list, track with analytics to see user behavior signals, and keep iterating on content until you get a good framework. The beauty of email is you can keep cycling people through different content.
Email is excellent for your owned list. How do you get new people to your site and then turn them into email subscribers?
Organic traffic via search engines like Google, YouTube, and Pinterest, and also new AI search engines, are a great way to do that.
Can these be used for SEO and organic traffic?
Yes, these pieces of content can definitely acquire organic search engine traffic from Google and other sources like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more (discussed in following section).
As we see here – according to data from Ahrefs, this piece from Tesla is bringing in anywhere from 1,000-4,000 visits a month (Ahrefs is usually 1-4x off actual estimates).
Truthfully, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to their overall traffic of 16.8M a month, but if Tesla doesn’t own this content, then a 3rd party review or tech news site would take that traffic. We all know how Elon feels about some of those publications. Similarly, a CEO, CMO or a content manager might follow that same line of logic and consider whether they want to fully take control of the conversation around their own products, or if they want to wholly leave it up to 3rd party sites.
Help & Support Content for Service & SEO
Content that reduces customer service requests, makes happy customers, and helps your SEO traffic? Sounds like triple-play.
Mailchimp does just that. For example, their Soft vs Hard Bounces page is linked to directly from within the Mailchimp app, when one is looking at the analytics report:
Which then takes the user to this full-fledged content piece.
What Mailchimp has learned, is that rather than sending a user to a helpdesk on a subdomain with a quick answer, it’s ideal to fully answer their question in context and have that page double as a traffic driver from organic search (SEO) and other channels.
Can these rank in ChatGPT, Gemini AI, and others?
They may rank in LLMs and other AI tools, they do have potential.
If we do a quick spot check, we see that this particular search doesn’t:
BUT the more general “what is a Tesla Powerwall” does trigger a Gemini AI overview:
This area is rapidly changing. The current lesson is that AI Overviews in Google are showing for broader, more informational queries, where Google has enough training data in the LLM.
The play here is to be aware of where they are and aren’t showing up, and whether your content is being cited and linked to.
When creating content landing pages with search and SEO in mind, it’s never about a single keyword – there is the high-level head term, and if it’s informational then it’s likely it may show up in an AI Overview, but also we know in modern SEO practices that it’s more about the entire topic of the page, covering multiple portions of the user intent and addressing them – mapped to different keywords. So, more specific keywords on page, such as comparison keywords, will also help that page rank for terms and may not trigger the AI Overviews to the same degree.
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