To Maximize Results Stop Sending Anyone Anywhere Except Your Landing Page Increase those conversions you've been working so hard to get.

When you run any type of online ad to increase traffic to your website, where do you send that traffic? Are you directing people to the homepage or other generic page? Stop wasting your money, and pause any paid promotion you have going on -- until you read this article.

Now that I've saved a little bit of your budget, let's talk about landing pages. Landing pages are pages on your website that are built with two things in mind -- a specific campaign and a specific goal or a particular action you want your new traffic to take.

Landing pages, if built right, are very effective in achieving your business goals. Unlike generic pages -- and your homepage -- every element of a lander should be working towards a definite measurable goal, whether it's signing up for something, sharing email or buying your product.

Related: Why You Need a Stellar Landing Page to Convert Prospects

When you send your paid traffic to your homepage or blog post, there are too many distractions. You've got current news and promotions, social links, the main navigation and lots of other links that pull a visitor's eye in all sorts of directions. See why you're wasting your money when you send them there? Because they scatter all over the place until they're fatigued with information and want to leave the site altogether. Consider yourself lucky if they bookmark the site for future reference.

Now, if you send people to a special page that was designed with an end goal in mind, things become much more streamlined, organized, and as a result, more effective.

That all seems easy and dandy, but how do you create a landing page if you've never done it before? What exactly do you put there? What components are necessary?

First of all, you've got to have one clear objective. What is the purpose of this page? What do you want people to do when they land on this page? Answer these questions, and you have the building blocks for a page that will just fall into place. If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, a call to action, a button or a form and a few sentences about the value of your newsletter should do the trick. If you want people to buy something, you can highlight that product, put a few relevant testimonials in, and seal the deal with a call to action and a button.

There are a few basic components on every landing page, independently of industry or objective. Clearly, the first one is your title -- the sentence or phrase that makes it clear from the get-go where they landed. Get as specific as you can. "This email series will teach you how to create effective social media strategies" or "Sign up for emails from [Company Name] to receive latest [name of an industry] industry news" are good examples. Bonus points go to the titles that also state a benefit, for example "This free checklist will help you organize your expenses, so you can identify areas where you need financial help" or "Get a free sample of our acne product and get rid of your acne in two weeks."

Related: 3 Critical Principles of Effective Calls to Action

The next important point is the copy beneath the title that further expands and explains it. Make it relevant, comprehensive and to the point. Show people you understand them and care about their pain points. Pay special attention to the graphics you're using. They have to convey the same mood as your overall branding and copy. If you're embedding a video, make sure it's short and relevant. If you have relevant testimonials, include one to two of those as well. Testimonials give you a sense of authority and confidence in your offering.

Finally, include your call to action. You can include it a couple of times on the page, but make sure it's the same across the copy. Do not ask them to sign up for newsletter here, and connect with you on Facebook there, and then top it off with a sales proposition. Remember -- one at a time.

Also, include any relevant links. Clearly, if you want people to buy your product, you need to send them to an appropriate page on your store. However, be careful with links, as too many links become a distraction. A good rule of thumb is to keep people on a landing page for as long as possible, without giving them a lot of opportunities to go somewhere else, unless it's necessary.

Another question that seems to create waves in the community of digital marketers is the length of a landing page: should it be short and sweet, or long and elaborate to give its visitors all the necessary information? I like the answer Neil Patel came up with -- "The bigger the ask, the longer the page." It makes sense -- the higher the price, the larger the commitment, thus, the more information is required to make the decision.

But don't trust me, A/B test it for yourself. A/B testing is another huge benefit of landing pages because you can play around with different copy and length, visuals, calls to action and everything in between. You can truly test what works and what doesn't, what gets results and where you are wasting your time.

Related: The Most Important Metric You Can Track

What's also great about landing pages is that they are much more trackable. You can see exactly how many people landed on the page, how many have bounced, how many converted, how much time they spent on the site, and so on.

Here is another thing to keep in mind. While you're playing with landing pages, make sure that they still stay relevant with your ad. You have to create a consistent and coherent experience across the board. If people click on your Facebook ad, they expect to get a similar experience on your site. If you advertise a free resource on your site, don't make it paid later on.

Landing pages create a wonderful opportunity to seal the brand experience, track your efforts and results, see what's working, and to finally increase conversions you've been working so hard to get.