Will pushing a visitor to a conversion page hosted on a 3rd-party domain hurt the landing page ranking

[infoblue]

Had an interesting question from a client. The client has a page that is optimized for a specific term. The goal of the page is to push users to sign-up for a trial. The trial registration (conversion) page is hosted by a third-party. Will pushing users to the conversion page cannibalize the SEO authority of the  landing page. My reflexive answer is to say no, but now am not so sure.

[infoblue]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. My apologies for the impreciseness of my language, but I was trying to describe a unique situation, where the client has or wants to create a "destination" page on their website for a specific keyword but also ultimately push traffic onward to the signup page, which sits on their corporate app server and a completely different domain. In a perfect world, the form would be on their "destination" page (which would make it a true landing page) but I don't believe that is technically or bureaucratically possible. Not looking for a lesson, just some insight on whether Google would reduce the SEO value of the "destination" page for ultimately directing traffic elsewhere. I don't think it would as long as the "destination" page was buttoned up with good structure and quality backlinks. But again, looking for confirmation or thoughts to the contrary.

Ultimately, I think the client is looking for me to give him something to go back to his management team and argue for development resources to put the form on his "destination" page. I can think of plenty of reasons to do it from a process and user experience perspective, but nothing really from an SEO rationale.

[SamuelScott]

First, just to correct your terms. "Conversion" page and "landing" page refer to the same page. The page that pushes the visitor to do something valuable (fill out a form, buy something, etc.). It is the page on which the traffic lands from somewhere else.

So, you're asking if your website page that is pushing traffic towards a landing page have its rankings hurt because the landing page is on another domain? It should not. The only extreme possibility that I can think of is if the other domain has penalties or is somehow known by Google to be a spammer. You never want your site to be associated with such sites in any way.

But why would you structure your conversion path in this manner? Wouldn't you want to keep everything on your domain? The only reason I can think of is if this is an affiliate website. If that's the case, then you need to be careful in general. Google loves to penalize what they call "thin, affiliate websites" that really offer nothing valuable and original -- especially in terms of content -- and exist only to sell stuff. Make sure that you or your client's site (if it's an affiliate) is truly quality. Just a comment on your overall strategy -- if this is indeed the case.

Hope that helps!