Best Moz article on landing pages?
-
From what I understand, building landing pages to link back to sites is a thing of the past. I am looking for a good article that explains best current landing page practices (post Panda and Penquin). Any suggestions?
-
Hi Courtney,
Reading your question, I'm not quite sure if you are talking about are microsites and doorway pages, or landing pages that target different geographical intent. (I'll assume the later)
It's fine if your client wants to target different geographical areas with specific content. The best practice for this type of thing usually involves:
- Make sure the content lives on your domain (don't create a bunch of microsites)
- Make the content unique and valuable to the specific area you are targeting
- Don't publish the same content just with slightly modifies words (best plumber Houston, best plumber Atlanta, etc) all over the web
If your client wants to publish the same content in different places - ask him/her what they hope to accomplish. Not only does this create duplicate content, but it really doesn't add any value for the end user.
Sounds like your instinct are correct. I don't have a list of articles that act as "proof" that you can show your client, but this article on microsites still holds up pretty well http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
And the dangers of duplicate content: http://moz.com/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
Hope this helps! Best of luck.
-
Advantage of Subdomain (Revealed by Experts)
-
A subdomain can point to IP Address (i.e. can have A Record) which can be used to host in the country specific hosting (cloud/blogging platform/shared hosting)
-
It has separate Page Rank, Domain Authority and indexing preferences in Search Engine
-
Easy to Manage
-
-
These are all great tips. Thanks guys. I still am confused on how to build the URL's. Currently they have a subdirectory for each (25) cities they service. They want a "landing page" for each and the company they are working with wants them to build sub-directories...again...
Essentially they are reinventing the wheel and building them a bunch of subdirectories again. What about subdomains? Would this be a better route for building landing pages for the 25 different cities?
-
You try the below when creating country specific or sister sites in different geo locations
1. Pricing Information with the Country Specific Currency
2. Date, Time etc with Country Specific Format
3. Vocabulary and Typography
4. Local Testimonials
5. Local Portfolio
6. the company special focus for the local/geo location if any
7. country specific domain (if not restricted)
8. Meta Tag on the page for the country code and language
9. if possible hosting the site in the local hosting provider (if possible)
10. Ofcourse content should be unique but need not have loads and lots of content.
-
it really depends on the context for the landing pages. In the case of franchisees , they, quite often setup local pages and also have links back to the corporate site from the local site. With regards to the local address part, if you're trying to rank for the local listings then not having the address on the site will have an impact on your local rankings.
-
Am I correct in assuming that the whole linking back to the sister site is the wrong way to do it?
I did suggest already to him that even if he has 5 url's to use, that each needs to be treated like it's own website with unique, engaging content. Will he be penalized with a link back to his main site? I know you don't want to inundate the site with links, but maybe one or two links? Will that hurt?
What about placing an address into the landing page? Will it hurt us significantly to not include a local address in the footer of the site? Since he really doesn't have locations in the areas he is targeting....if that makes any sense....How do you localize the content? Just on page?
-
Based on what you're describing, i would advise the client not to go down that route. The idea for landing pages is to drive targeted traffic for a specific campaign with unique information. I would suggest adding some localized content for each of the pages to impact conversion rates and visitor interaction.The unique content will not only lead to a better conversion rate but can be optimized for geo targeted keyword phrases without being perceived as duplicate by Google.
-
These are great, I will start here. Now how about building them so they are SEO friendly? I read that linking back to sister sites is not a way to do it anymore. My client basically wants to build a lot of pages in different geographic areas, but have the content the same as his main business website (which is a local company). Is he going about this wrong? Would google see this as a bunch of duplicate content with too many links pointing to the main website? I feel like this isn't an approved practice, am I wrong? #newtolandingpages
-
Hi Courtney,
I've referenced a few links below that might be helpful for you.
Conversion Rate Experts - Moz Case Study ( this is a fantastic example of how to build landing pages. Their site has other excellent examples of landing page implementation)
Unbounce Article on Landing Pages
Landing Pages Guides on Hubspot
Cheers,
SEO5
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question About : Redirecting Old Pages to New & More Relevant Ones
I'm looking over a friends website, which used to have great natural ranking for some big keywords. Those ranking & CTR's have dropped a lot, so the next thing I checked into was top selling Brand & Category pages. Its seems like every year or so a New Page was constructed for each brand... Many of which have high quality and natural inbound links. However, the pages no longer have products and simply look outdated. I'm trying to figure out if they should place redirects on all the old pages to a new URL which is more seo friendly. Example Links : http://www.xyz.com/nike2004.html , http://www.xyz.com/nike-spring2006.html , http://www.xyz.com/2011-nike-shoes.html - (have quality inbound links, bad content) .... Basically would it be advantageous to place redirects on all of these example pages to a new one that will be more permanent... http://www.xyz.com/nike-shoes.html I'm also looking at about 15 brands and maybe 100+ old/outdated urls, so I wasn't sure if I should do this & to what extent. Considering many of the brand pages do rank, but not as well as they should... Any input would help, thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Is Moz Domain Authority still relvant when it comes to Google ranking?
My understanding of Moz DA is that it is predominantly based on external links. Since Penguin I am noticing more and more websites ranking high in Google with a "low" number of links and certainly a low DA but quality and relevancy of content and also of offering. I understand that there was always more to ranking than DA but is it anymore even relevant to how a site will rank in Google?
Algorithm Updates | | halloranc0 -
Can a google data refresh knock your pages out of the rankings?
I see that around mid November 2013 a handful of my sites pages dropped off of Google completely. It was around the data refreshes in November, and while everyone says it doesn't effect that much I was wondering if anyone knew if it could knock some of my pages out of the rankings for a specific keyword. Note - we had previously held muliple listings for different pages on our site for this particular keyword. Google kept the highest ranking and knocked the lower ones off. See attached image of our keyword ranking history to see what I mean. DcJJM0M
Algorithm Updates | | franchisesolutions0 -
Would Google Remove Pages for Inactivity?
Hi, I've been watching the Total Indexed number for 4 domains that I work with for the last few months. In Google Webmaster Tools three of them were holding steady up until August-September, when suddenly they started declining by hundreds of thousands of URLs a week. I've asked my IT department and they say they haven't done anything technically different in the last few months that would affect indexation. I've also searched on google and on search marketing blogs to see if anyone else has experience this to no avail. As you can see in the image, the "Not Selected" pages have not increased so it appears this is not due to duplicate content (of which we have a lot). However, the "Ever Crawled" number is increasing. The only reasonable answer that I can conclude is that Google is now de-indexing inactive URLs? Anyone have a better answer? yIYDm.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | OfficeFurn0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
How did my Page Authority and Page Rank disappear?
I've hit a problem. A couple days ago my site's page authority was 51 and the PR was 3 and now they're 1 and 0 respectively. The developer did adjust some of the code in the site in the past couple days but that shouldn't have affected this. It was last cached by Google on the 5th. Can anyone offer some good advice? If it helps the page is www.duracard.com
Algorithm Updates | | Andrea.G0 -
Help on article submission
I've had a few articles made up about Microsoft Training for the training company I work for. What's the best practice to submitting these articles, any tips on how best to use these articles to boost seo for our website? All help is greatly appreciated. Jack
Algorithm Updates | | jpc10040