We have been preaching about targeted landing pages for a long time. From a previous post last April:

A “landing page” is the first page a visitor to your site sees. Almost all of your pages have the potential to be a landing page, so design them as such. Whether or not that visitor remains on your site is determined in large part by what she sees on that first page, that landing page. If she sees what she is looking for (i.e. the search term she typed), she is likely to remain; if not, she will most likely leave.

What this means for websites is that the more targeted the landing pages, the more likely the website is to attract and keep visitors. A “targeted” landing page is a page built around one or two keywords or key phrases. When a person comes to your website from a search engine, she is more likely to remain on your site if your landing page contains, and is built around, her search word or phrase.

For best results, use your keyword or phrase in your page title, headings and content.

If you are going to utilize pay-per-click (ppc) advertising, it is absolutely essential to direct people to a targeted landing page. A startling study by  which was reported by Emarketer found that an alarming number of businesses are not connecting their ppc campaigns with targeted landing pages.

Two-thirds of advertisers did not have a specific landing page relevant to the search keywords they had purchased, misdirecting searchers to homepages, generic categories or search results for canned phrases. Even one-half of product-specific search ads did not link to the product advertised.

Wow, think of all the missed opportunities! When using ppc, make sure you are linking to a page that is relevant to the search phrase you are targeting. People are not starting their searches on your site, they are starting their searches on Google and letting Google lead them to your site (or not).

Wharton Marketing – http://wharton-marketing.com * (870).404.1985

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