SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) have become essential process that cannot be overlooked by any online business website. Having a well designed website/page that is not optimized for the search engines is not desirable as it may remain hidden. The webpage / site must be able to pull in the required traffic that fulfils the business objectives. If you have an online marketing campaign going on, it is very essential that required potential traffic keeps flowing into the website and to the specific landing page.

Actually in SEO every page of a site that gets indexed by search engines becomes a potential landing page and nothing is left to chance. Here there may not be a single landing page that demands immediate /instant conversion. The content of the web page and/or links to the page are optimized for very specific, carefully researched keywords. This requires very careful planning.

In SEM and PPC (pay per click) campaigns, a landing page, also known by the term lead “capture page” is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, which is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. This landing page is also used for counting and tracking all the arrivals and determines the level of effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

Thus landing pages are of two types

• Referential
• Transactional

While the referential landing page contains the relevant information as required by the visitor, a transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete some transaction. This could be filling up some form/ registration/ or addition to a mailing list etc. Only once the transaction is over, can the visitor be said to be a conversion. But this is a challenging process. How do we motivate a visitor to register? He needs to be comforted, motivated and directed to take action and get converted. A more efficient landing page will mean a better conversion rate.

Needless to say, a lot of effort has to go in designing the right landing page that can enhance a website’s conversion rate. One might have to even try out different design options and see which one works best.

Francis

Seo Specialist

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 8:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.