What Is a Money Page, and How Do You Optimize One?

You probably already know that not all pages of your website are created equal. Some of them are simply more important than others and some of them are simply more valuable than others. The most valuable pages of your website are going to be called your “money pages.” But how exactly do you find a money page, and what steps do you take to optimize it to serve your business?

What is a money page?

We’ll start with the basic outline. What is a money page, exactly?

A money page is any page of your site that has a high likelihood of helping you generate revenue. Typically, these pages offer a product or service, or an opportunity to learn more about a product or service. They also typically have a call to action (CTA) for your visitors, encouraging them to either make a purchase or fill out a contact form.

Service pages. Your money pages could come in the form of service pages, individually listing the services you can provide to your clients.

Product pages. They could also be in the form of product pages, showcasing and describing the most important products that you’re selling.

Dedicated landing pages. You may also have dedicated landing pages tailored to individual audience segments and optimized for conversions.

Websites can have more than one money page. In fact, most websites have several money pages. You likely know at least a handful of your pages that are money pages, and you can discover more with a simple analysis.

Take a peek into your Google Analytics profile and look at some of your highest converting pages. Which pages of your site are most frequently visited? And which of those pages tend to have the highest conversion rates? If you have no idea what your money pages are, this is a great place to start.

Search Optimization

Once you identify your money pages, there are two main ways to optimize them. You can optimize them for search engines, increasing their likelihood of being discovered by people conducting ordinary Google searches. And you can optimize them for user behavior — in other words, optimizing them to earn more conversions.

These are the best strategies for optimizing your money pages better for search engines:

Target specific keywords. You probably already know that your money pages should be targeting some combination of keywords or a keyword phrase. What you might not know is that your money PP should be as optimized as specifically as possible. It’s much better to rank highly for a very niche term than it is to try and optimize for a general term.

Include ample content. It’s also a good idea to include ample content on your money page. This will provide you with more of an opportunity to optimize for your target keywords and phrases, but more importantly, will help you increase the perceived quality of this page.

Build more links. Link building is indispensable for any search optimization strategy. Though it’s a bit of an oversimplification, you can think of it this way: more links means more authority, which in turn means higher rankings. Try to earn natural links from the best publishers you can.

Keep your pages updated. Finally, keep refreshing the content on your best money pages. Don’t allow them to become obsolete because you refused to change them over the years. This is especially important for industries that change rapidly.

Behavior/Conversion Optimization

if you want your money pages to convert more visitors, focus on these strategies:

Focus on concise value communication. Your goal is to communicate value to the people visiting your page. Why should they sign up for this service? Why should they buy this product? Focus on the unique and valuable selling points as concisely as possible.

Include more trust factors. Some many pages fail to perform simply because they don’t offer enough trust to new visitors. Fortunately, there are many ways to boost trust on a web page, such as by including more reviews and testimonials, highlighting more photos and proving your association with other trusted brands.

Add videos and images. Videos and images tend to be much more persuasive than written content. Try to make your money pages as visual as possible, even if what you’re selling is abstract.

Tweak subtle variables and experiment. You’re probably not going to perfect your conversion rate on the first pass. Keep experimenting with different variables, like the structure of your headlines and your choice in colors and fonts, to keep inching that rate higher.

Obviously, search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion optimization are both very complicated and nuanced topics that can’t be comprehensively covered in the span of a single article. That said, these strategies and tactics can get you started with improving the performance of your money pages.

Originally appeared in Entrepreneur