Keywords and Landing Pages
You may have heard the term ‘Landing Page’ and wondered what that means.
A Landing Page is a sub-page – not the Home Page – which is designed to target or focus on a specific topic. Think of them as additional doors to the website. Most people come in the front door, but some people come in a side door or enter through a patio door. They all lead to the same building, but each door is different. Of course that’s not an exact analogy, so let me use a better example:
If you look within the website of a car manufacturer, you will find that in addition to their home page they make use of several different landing pages. The home page is a general directory with information about the company, but then there are sub-pages for each car, that they make. While you can get to these pages using the home page you could also find them in a search for the car name. And following that link you would wind up at the landing page, rather than the home page, with no need to click-through to find what you are looking for.
Landing pages can even be more specific than just for a particular car model. They can be temporary pages designed for a special edition of the car or for a coupon for an oil change or a special sale campaign.
To increase visibility in online searches these landing pages are focused on a particular subject with its own content, keyword headings, keyword text, and keyword links. Unlike a home page which normally contains general keywords, landing pages are designed to be used for niche topics or specific products.
Generally, it’s much easier to develop content with great keywords for specific products or services than it is for general topics, and there tends to be much less competition for those specific keywords. So landing pages are a valuable tactic for search engine optimization.
Landing pages can also be used for great effect with direct links from a pay-per-click or email campaign. In these cases, an online ad or mass e-mail directs the viewer to the landing page though links. Viewers skip over the home page and go directly to the landing page.
You may be getting this type of sales pitch in your inbox on a regular basis. Borders Books uses temporary landing pages for its email campaign sent to everyone who has signed up for one of their customer loyalty cards.
Another benefit of using these targeted landing pages is that visitors who come to them tend to be more satisfied because they find the exact information that they are looking for. These visitors tend to stay longer, and have a lower bounce rate with more click-though to other pages.
How is it possible to know these things? Because landing pages can be tracked thanks to Google Analytics and other tools. With tracking software it is possible to create several landing pages and track and compare the results of each set. With pay-per-click or e-mail campaigns where people are directed to come straight to the landing page instead of the home page, the statistics will show the true results of the marketing campaign and SEO stratagem.
Many companies shy away from landing pages because they do represent a fair amount of work to target niche customers or run a limited time email campaign. One can not deny there is more time and energy involved in creating these extra pages but the reward in reaching these prospects is more than worth it. Think about it this way, if you have already captured a person’s attention and enticed them to act and go to a landing page, then you have a real potential customer not just a lookie-loo.
Whether you hire a professional or do the work yourself, make sure that your landing pages are focused with specific content and SEO key wording. Don’t forget to setup proper tracking to insure that you can see if all the effort on the landing pages is paying off, or if you need to adjust your site for better results.
Technorati Tags: seo, landing page, keywords, search engines
This article was first published March 17, 2009 on the Tatum Marketing blog
You may have heard the term ‘Landing Page’ and wondered what that means.
A Landing Page is a sub-page – not the Home Page – which is designed to target or focus on a specific topic. Think of them as additional doors to the website. Most people come in the front door, but some people come in a side door or enter through a patio door. They all lead to the same building, but each door is different. Of course that’s not an exact analogy, so let me use a better example:
If you look within the website of a car manufacturer, you will find that in addition to their home page they make use of several different landing pages. The home page is a general directory with information about the company, but then there are sub-pages for each car, that they make. While you can get to these pages using the home page you could also find them in a search for the car name. And following that link you would wind up at the landing page, rather than the home page, with no need to click-through to find what you are looking for.
Landing pages can even be more specific than just for a particular car model. They can be temporary pages designed for a special edition of the car or for a coupon for an oil change or a special sale campaign.
To increase visibility in online searches these landing pages are focused on a particular subject with its own content, keyword headings, keyword text, and keyword links. Unlike a home page which normally contains general keywords, landing pages are designed to be used for niche topics or specific products.
Generally, it’s much easier to develop content with great keywords for specific products or services than it is for general topics, and there tends to be much less competition for those specific keywords. So landing pages are a valuable tactic for search engine optimization.
Landing pages can also be used for great effect with direct links from a pay-per-click or email campaign. In these cases, an online ad or mass e-mail directs the viewer to the landing page though links. Viewers skip over the home page and go directly to the landing page.
You may be getting this type of sales pitch in your inbox on a regular basis. Borders Books uses temporary landing pages for its email campaign sent to everyone who has signed up for one of their customer loyalty cards.
Another benefit of using these targeted landing pages is that visitors who come to them tend to be more satisfied because they find the exact information that they are looking for. These visitors tend to stay longer, and have a lower bounce rate with more click-though to other pages.
How is it possible to know these things? Because landing pages can be tracked thanks to Google Analytics and other tools. With tracking software it is possible to create several landing pages and track and compare the results of each set. With pay-per-click or e-mail campaigns where people are directed to come straight to the landing page instead of the home page, the statistics will show the true results of the marketing campaign and SEO stratagem.
Many companies shy away from landing pages because they do represent a fair amount of work to target niche customers or run a limited time email campaign. One can not deny there is more time and energy involved in creating these extra pages but the reward in reaching these prospects is more than worth it. Think about it this way, if you have already captured a person’s attention and enticed them to act and go to a landing page, then you have a real potential customer not just a lookie-loo.
Whether you hire a professional or do the work yourself, make sure that your landing pages are focused with specific content and SEO key wording. Don’t forget to setup proper tracking to insure that you can see if all the effort on the landing pages is paying off, or if you need to adjust your site for better results.
Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Eric Gerds