What is a landing page and when do you need one
Landing page is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot. Technically, any page a visitor lands on is a landing page. In practice, when people in marketing say landing page, they mean something much more specific.
Get clear on the difference before you spend on ads.
What a landing page actually is
A landing page is a standalone page built around a single goal. One action. One outcome. Everything on the page, the headline, the copy, the imagery, the button, points toward that one thing.
That action might be: making an enquiry, booking a consultation, signing up to a mailing list, or buying a product. What it is not is a general introduction to your business. That is what your homepage is for.
The key difference is distraction. A homepage has a nav bar, links to other pages, multiple calls to action and content that serves different types of visitors. A landing page has none of that. The visitor can take the desired action or leave. That is it.
When a landing page is the right tool
Landing pages work best when paired with paid traffic, Google Ads, Meta ads, LinkedIn ads. When someone clicks an ad, they arrive with a specific intent based on what the ad promised them. The page they land on needs to fulfil that exact promise immediately.
If you are running Google Ads targeting "kitchen extension builder Surrey" and sending those clicks to your homepage, you are wasting money. The homepage serves too many purposes. It dilutes the message and gives the visitor too many places to go, most of which are not the enquiry form. why your website needs to load in under three seconds
A dedicated landing page for that campaign speaks directly to someone who wants a kitchen extension in Surrey. It answers their specific questions, shows relevant work, handles their objections and makes enquiring the obvious next step. The message in the ad matches the message on the page. That alignment, called message match, is one of the biggest factors in paid search conversion rates.
When a landing page is the wrong tool
If your traffic is primarily organic, people finding you through Google search without clicking an ad, a landing page is usually not what you need.
Landing pages do not rank well in organic search. They are deliberately thin on content: one goal, minimal copy, no outbound links. Search engines reward the opposite, depth, structure, internal linking, relevance across multiple related queries.
For organic traffic, you need well-structured service and location pages that rank for the right terms and convert visitors who arrive with varying levels of intent. A landing page built for a Google Ads campaign will not do that job. what good local SEO actually looks like
The question to ask
Before building a landing page, ask: where is this traffic coming from and what did I promise them to get the click?
If the traffic is paid and the promise is specific, a landing page is usually the right move. If the traffic is organic and the goal is to rank for search terms, you need a proper page, not a landing page.
How Makeproper approaches this
We build landing pages as part of paid search and social campaigns for clients running ads. We also advise on when a landing page is the right tool and when improving existing service pages would do a better job.
If you are planning to run Google Ads or Meta ads and want to make sure your traffic is landing somewhere that can actually convert it, get in touch. five things every small business website needs in 2026
