23 replies to this topic

[Lydia]

How embarassing. Let me say this again. How embarassing.

This is such a basic question, but hopefully someone can find the goodness (and patience) in their heart to guide me the right way:

How do I build a landing page? I'm in the process of installing a ROI tracking software that requires me to build landing pages... and I really want to make sure that I don't miss anything...

I think I should have a robots.txt file so to make sure that the spiders don't catch on those pages, and I should probably delete some links that point to other pages??? HELP...

Does anyone know of any Web pages that have instructions on building and loading landing pages onto the server... something like "Landing Pages for Dummies"??? :tooth:

Thank you in advance...

Lydia

[websage]

1. Just create a page which is consistent with the rest of the site and has good text that is not misleading but has action words to invite the visitor to explore the next step.

2. Use easy-to-understand URL, i.e.
www.site.com/promo1

3. Read and analyze your web server log files often and adjust.

[Googlewhacked]

Hey Lydia,

Physically (make that "Digitally"), a landing page is no different from any other page on your site. The only differences are on the requirements of the ROI tracking tool being used that requires the page(s) to be created.

That said, in my experience (albeit limited), these kinds of tools require the use of a "tracking URL", which is basically a link that either references a web address with a unique page identifier (so that the tracking tool can tell which pages are being accessed by the visitor) or some kind of script that logs this information when the page is visited.

Without knowing more about the tracking tool, I'm afraid I cannot be of much help. Which one are you using? What are the tool's requirements?

- GW

[Googlewhacked]

Also, I would agree that you probably do want to set up a robots.txt file to exclude these pages.

For information on setting this up, check out the Robots.txt page. There are also several "robots.txt" file generators available on the 'net.

HTH!

- GW

[Lydia]

Dear Websage and Googlewacked,

Thank you for your insight. By golly, that was fast!

Googlewacked, I'll be using ConversionRuler.

Now, if I just wanted to make a copy of the homepage of the site, can I just copy the HTML code et al?

Thanks again!

Lydia

[Lydia]

Oh,

Just wanted to add that I understand the mechanics behind building the tracking URL (with query strings, etc).

The main issue is that I'm not much of a designer, and need some guidance with the actual building of the pages. Basically I just want to make a copy of the homepage, but making sure that I add the JavaScript that Conversion Ruler requires. Would it be enough to just copy the HTML code and add the JavaScript in there? I know it is quite basic, but your feedback is always much appreciated.

God bless,

Lydia

[websage]

Hmm, making a mere copy of the front page would not be a perfect idea. It would be confusing both to the human visitors and upsetting to the search engine crawler. At least the content should be specificly targetting the reason you want to have a landing page. Make sure from the lending page you have clear navigation to both the front page, and the action page, i.e. Contact Us, or whatever that might be.

The SE spiders do not want to see identical pages with identical page titles and identical text, as they might consider this spamming.

[Haystack]

Hi Lydia,

first, are you sure you NEED to set up landing pages for your ROI tracking program? With many programs you can track your ads by using a tracking code at the end of the page you want to send the traffic to rather than needed a separate landing page for your ads.

Assuming you do need to create landing pages, I recommend creating a separate directory for those pages, then tweaking the text on each page to align them with the terms you're bidding on.

[Lydia]

Hi Websage,

Thanks - but if I put a robots.txt file in there, wouldn't this potential problem with the search engines disappear?

Lydia

[Googlewhacked]

Lydia,

Yeah, IMHO that should be just fine, as long as the body copy of the page is different, though that probably goes without saying... (I have a natural talent for stating the obvious...)

On a side note:
As a matter of practice, whenever I begin working on a site, one of the first things I do is build a "template page" that has the same look & feel as the rest of the site, and then optimize that page (optimize in this case meaning cleaning up the HTML of the page) so that I have a nice clean base to work from. Just a thought...

- GW

[Lydia]

Hi Haystack,

Thanks for your insight. Yep, ConversionRuler asks for Landing Pages...

The other reason why I was thinking about just having a copy of the homepage was because I was going to see how each bid is converting through PPC, and then determine from among the performance which listings would be best to concentrate on for SEO purposes. If I build different landing pages (that is, not just a copy of the homepage, but content with diffent text, etc), I'll have two issues:

1) It'll be a lot of work, as the client has hundreds of listings

2) By having different landing pages for each term (instead of just copies of the homepage) it will not be a good approximation of the conversion I could expect for the site's homepage when I'm done optimizing the site for different search engine keyphrases through regular SEO.

I hope this sort of explain my questions... thank you again very much for any advice you (and everyone else) can give me!

[websage]

Hi Websage,

Thanks - but if I put a robots.txt file in there, wouldn't this potential problem with the search engines disappear?

Lydia

Not all search engines follow the robots.txt rules.

[Lydia]

Googlewacked,

Thank you for the insight.

It just so happens that the homepage is mainly a big graphic with links in it (I didn't design the site... it fell in my hands for optimization after it was designed), so there's not much text to be changed. It should be ok to just make a copy of that, no?

Shouldn't I also make sure that there are no internal links pointing to the landing pages?

Thank you also for the tip regarding the template. Again, because I didn't design it, I don't have it in my possession, but I'll keep the tip for future reference.

Grazie mille!

Lydia

[Lydia]

Websage,

Not all search engines follow the robots.txt rules.

Yikes, that's a scary thought. I wasn't aware of that. Which engines are those? Any ideas on how else to make sure that they don't spider the landing page?

Cheers,

Lydia

[Googlewhacked]

Hey Lydia,

I would still advise that you change any text that is on the page, just to be on the safe side.

As for the links, if you intend on having these pages contain any type of meaningful content, then I would suggest including them in the navigation of the site (as appropriate). Otherwise they become dangerously close to doorway pages (which is not advisable).

- GW