Greg K.SEO and analytics at Adcore · LinkedInA landing page is a standalone page with one goal: someone arrives for a specific offer and is meant to take one action, such as submitting an inquiry. There’s usually no menu and no extra links. A website is like a store where you can wander the aisles; a landing page is like a salesperson with one product. Below: when that salesperson makes money and when they just get in the way.
What is a landing page in plain English
The name comes from the idea of “landing”: it’s the place where someone arrives after clicking an ad or a link. Google itself uses the term broadly: in Google Ads Help, a landing page means any page an ad leads to. Marketers use it more narrowly: a page built for one offer, with one call to action and no navigation.
Landing pages most often come in two kinds. A lead generation page collects contact details through a form, while a click-through page warms people up and sends them on to a purchase or a subscription. A café that has launched delivery, a training course, a webinar, a new residential development or a promotion at a car dealership: each has one offer, so each can use a landing page.
Landing page vs website: how they differ
In a store you can wander around, compare and leave without buying, and that’s normal. A salesperson with one product will talk to you about that product, and you either buy it or you don’t. Both work, they’re just different.
| Landing page | Website | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | One action | Several jobs: inform, sell, convince |
| Pages | One | From a few to thousands |
| Navigation | Usually no menu | Menu, sections, search |
| Where people come from | Ads, email campaigns | Search, ads, direct visits |
| How long it lives | While the campaign runs | For years, building up rankings |
A brochure site also differs from a landing page, even though both are small: a brochure site tells the story of the company as a whole across a few pages, while a landing page sells one thing on one page. And a website and a landing page aren’t interchangeable: they work best together, with the website as the base and separate pages for ads.
Check whatever applies to you.
You need a website. A landing page won’t do the job here: too few reasons to stay and too little chance in search.
What a landing page is made of
The blocks can vary, but the logic stays the same: every block leads to the same button.
The main block comes first. Someone clicked on a promise in the ad, and the headline has to repeat it. Marketers call this message match. Google’s own help pages also say that landing page experience depends on what people expect after the click and on the number of links on the page, and that this affects Quality Score.
The rule about links was first stated clearly by Oli Gardner of Unbounce: on a typical homepage he counted about 40 clickable elements per desired action, while on a focused page the ratio should be 1:1. To be fair, his articles don’t measure the effect, so this is a practitioner’s rule of thumb. The logic is clear: every extra link is a door people can leave through.
Speed matters too: people who click an ad won’t wait, especially on a phone. According to Google’s 2016 data, 53% of mobile site visitors leave if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. The data is old, but the direction hasn’t changed since.
What’s a normal conversion rate for a landing page
The largest public benchmark comes from Unbounce: a median conversion rate of 6.6% across 41,000 landing pages and 57 million conversions, with data from July 2023 to July 2024. By industry, the figure ranges from 3.8% to 12.3%.
Treat this with caution. These are pages from one platform’s customers, mostly in English, and a webinar signup and an inquiry about a house aren’t worth the same. Compare yourself with yourself: how your conversion rate changed after an edit and how much money each percentage point brings in. For that we have a conversion calculator.
When a landing page hurts
One page covers a narrow range of queries. Ahrefs calls this one of the biggest issues with single-page websites. To show up for every service, you need separate pages.
Dozens of nearly identical pages for “repairs Kyiv,” “repairs Lviv” and so on are what Google calls doorway abuse, and it can cost the whole site its visibility.
A catalog won’t fit on one page. A landing page can still handle a dozen items, but not hundreds.
When people compare options, ask around and come back a month later, they need case studies, team bios, prices and articles. This is our own reasoning, not a measurement, but for complex services we usually recommend a website.
How to create a landing page: five steps
- One offer and one actionWrite in one sentence what you offer and what people should do. If you can’t, you have two landing pages.
- Customer objectionsAsk your sales team what people worry about and what they ask. Those answers become the page’s blocks.
- Copy before designHeadline, proof, objections. Design only helps people read it.
- Build it yourself or hire someoneA page builder lets you put the page together yourself, and a free plan lets you try it out. What it costs to hire someone, we cover separately: how much a website costs.
- Count leadsConnect analytics before you launch ads and count leads, not views.
We build landing pages for ad campaigns: structure, copy, design and analytics, all from one team. Landing pages from Adcore.
Landing page FAQ
Landing page or lander?
Both words are used, but the standard term is “landing page.”
How does a landing page differ from a presentation?
A landing page is measured by one action that makes money. Without it, the page is just a pretty presentation.
Can you make a landing page for free?
Yes, on a page builder’s free plan. A custom domain and analytics usually cost extra, and those are exactly what you need for ads.
Can you promote a landing page in Google?
Yes, but only for a narrow range of queries. To capture broad demand, you need separate pages for each topic.
How long does a landing page live?
As long as the offer does. After a campaign ends, landing pages are usually removed or updated, while the website stays.
Sources
- Landing page, Google Ads Help.
- Landing page experience: Definition, Google Ads Help.
- Doorway abuse, spam policies, Google Search Central.
- Conversion Benchmark Report, Unbounce, 2024 edition.
- Attention ratio and message match, Oli Gardner, Unbounce, 2013.
- Landing Page vs. Website, HubSpot, February 2025.
- Mobile page speed benchmarks, Think with Google, 2017.
- Single-page website, Ahrefs, May 2023.