Get More Visitors Flying to Your Site Using Landing Pages

-By Impact Direct

The Nature of a Landing Page

A landing page is a web page that a surfer will land on after clicking on an advertisement link.  This page supplies content that refers back to the link or ad, or the page is optimized for a specific keyword term or phrase to allure search engines.  Landing pages are useful for checking the effectiveness of paid ads and to supply copy, images, and other content specifically engineered to the advertisement.  Adding links to the URL allows marketers to compare ad effectiveness based on relative click-through rates. 

The two basic types of landing pages are reference and transactional.  The mission of ‘reference’ landing pages is to relay information that is relevant to the visitor.  Pages may include similar text references, dynamic compilations, and other relevant on-line elements.  A ‘transactional’ landing page will attempt to persuade a visitor to complete some sort of activity including a sale of a product, service, or content, submission of information, interaction with advertisements on the landing page, or any other form of measurable action which would be desired by the advertiser.

Reference landing pages seek to fulfill the objectives of the publisher, whether it is content management in the case of associations, organizations, or public service entities.  The reference landing page utilization can be measured by the revenue value of advertising displayed on them.  Transactional landing pages are interested in conversions, that is the conversion rate of visitors into committing actions.  On-line marketing is concerned with conversion rates, so it is vital to continuously look into the effectiveness of transactional landing pages.

Plying the Page

Each page of a site indexed by search engines is ranked for any term and propels traffic to the site from search engines:  this is the main objective of a landing page.  In the process of search engine optimization, the content on the page along with the links, are tailored toward very specific keyword phrases that were previously researched by the authors of the site.  The keywords will be germane to the products and/or services offered by the site to attract a high number of traffic to the site.

A different spin to a landing page denotes supplying pages that are not intended and optimized to convert a visitor directly.  The page will be optimized for more general purposes and will less concerned with targeted keyword phrases.  This will result in a lower conversion rate than pages with specific terms will generate, but the purpose of the former is to serve as a Hub or ‘mini portal’ within a site.  For larger web sites that expand into a number of topics the ‘mini portals’ will serve useful.  A single homepage won’t optimized for every single topic and be relevant to all of them, but with the mini portals this can be indirectly achieved.  The site essentially breaks down into a number of homepages, which does ultimately congeal all aspects together.

Landing Pages Vindicated

Pay-per-click advertising should be organized so that the custom pages for the site are landing pages, not simply a product or category page.  The latter may outline a listing of products and images, but the great potential of your spending dollars are not being fully utilized.  You really do not want to direct visitors to your homepage either, unless there is an all-encompassing keyword phrase describing all of your products, which would show a lack of creativity and selection on your part.  It would be more advantageous to the tenacity of your site to direct a visitor to a page comparable to the homepage, but delineates how the service or product compares to direct competition and why they should stay and comeback to the site.

The purpose of on-line advertising is to augment your revenue in order for more money to be invested in the advertising, in turn again increasing profits through the effectiveness of existing and new keywords and landing pages.  One can easily calculate a simple formula directly related to your bid amount and your generated revenue.

Smooth Landing Pages

• Showcasing promotions on your page is a good business move.  Offer enticing elements such as free shipping, reduced prices, buy one-get one free, guarantees, etc.  These will all intrigue potential buyers to your page.
  
  
• Ideally, orchestrating a landing page for each keyword bid on is the way to go, but if this is not economically or time feasible, then create a web page for every three to five keywords and display them each on the landing pages.  Create keyword groups based on a theme.
  
  
• Content on the page should substantiate your business of being there to begin with, not so much to compel visitors to become a customer.  Write several paragraphs offering choices for the visitor.  If you construct a paragraph about a particular type of product, add a link to the appropriate product page.  You want to gently lull the visitor into becoming enthralled about the product, and if this is successful, they will make a purchase.  You want to facilitate visitor trust and interest, so that they will return again and tell their friends about you.
  
  
• Try and incorporate some positive customer testimonials into your landing pages.  Anyone who is looking to spend money wants to make sure that it will not become a mistake, so by reading about others who have previously purchased with satisfaction will only propel a visitor to do so as well.
  
  
• Make the page easily navigable.  You don’t want the potential customer becoming flustered and searching for the back button to reverse out of a confusing situation.
  
  
• Using appropriate wording is really an art.  If you find the right approach in reaching the visitor they will be charmed into selecting certain prompts.  Word it so as you are making things easier for them; setting ‘call-to-action’ prompts to a larger font and more vivid color is not a bad idea either.
  
  
• You want to always be more cutting-edge, wittier, and stand-out more than your competitor, so do some brainstorming as to how you are going to present yourself in that way to the customer.  Have sizing charts, color patterns, free downloads, unique links to other resources, etc. available on your site.
  
  
• People will always immediately go with names they know, so until you become one of those names, having previous successes amidst your products is a good idea.  ‘Big name’ products are deemed so for a reason, they have spent their time in the market and have done successfully, so if your products are amongst them, people will start to associate your products with them.
  
  
• Working in ‘cross-selling’ to the landing pages is a great marketing strategy, but again, it must be done in a subtle fashion.  You don’t want the customer to feel like a pushy car salesman has written the page, you want them to be informed and part of that is to let them know that you can not only offer product X, but accessories to go along with product X.