How do I direct users ONLY to my squeeze page?

[perryny]

I've created a membership site. I'd like to funnel all initial visitors to my squeeze page and then follow up with an email campaign offering free content before introducing the actual site and sales letter to my prospective subscriber.

However, from all my reading on SEO and maximizing traffic, I should be optimizing every one of my pages to act as a landing page, each one optimized for my chosen keywords.

So, how do I ensure that my entire site is optimized for SEO, while only allowing new visitors to access the squeeze page?

Thanks,
-Robert

[perryny]

Any help is appreciated.

[Ken Durham]

The thing is if you are using a redirect, the search spiders are going to get redirected also. You could script something to keep a look out for spiders and then allow them access but you would have to keep a list of spiders and their information in order to do this.
I have a similar function I wrote for my sites but it deals with logging visitor visits and not recording spider visits. I imagine with a little modifying it could be made to do what you want.

I'm not sure of any other way to do this but someone else might know.

[vicone]

One way is to set up the system in such a way that the traffic which arrives lands on an optin page.

For instance, it's common for content to be built on the basis of keywords that you have researched. Often an article is used for this purpose for each keyword. These pages act as traffic generators - they attract traffic. In effect, they are traffic feeder pages.

You could have an optin form on each of these article pages or you could have a popup or a banner which sends visitors to a dedicated optin page.

Here is an example of such a system in action. It was originally built as a product site with product listings but was converted to the system described above.

The optin page is optimized for SEO. If you click the resources link at the bottom (not meant to be conspicuous - the link is there for search engines to follow, not human visitors) you'll find it takes you to a number of article pages.

Anyone who lands on the first optin page or one of the article pages (all optimized for SEO) is invited to subscribe with the on-page form. However, note what happens when they leave one of those pages. There is an exit page script which redirects the visitor to a second, more powerful, dedicated optin page. As well, the exit script generates a message alerting the visitor to cancel their departure if they'd like a chance at the goodies on the 2nd optin page.

All these pages work together to attract traffic and then invite visitors into the system.

You can see how it works on this site (see what happens when you leave):

Christmas Gift Ideas They Love

Of course, you can't use exit pages with Adwords. Some other paid sources will accept one popup. The script is excellent for organic traffic, article marketing, etc. Adding the exit page script tripled the number of subscribers.

Ivan

[perryny]

Thanks Ivan,

I see what you're doing. My problem is that I don't want users accessing my internal pages before I "launch" my site for them (around the 3rd autoresponder email I deliver to them).

So, let's say for instance you didn't want users seeing your "christmas-gifts-wish-list-part-1" page, until you want to send them there after you collect their email and direct them there in an email campaign.

Since you used SEO to optimize keywords for that page, if a searcher typed "christmas gifts wish list", there's a good chance they'd find that internal page on your site.

How do you ensure that if they clicked the google or article link to the site that they'd be automatically redirected to your prefered landing page instead...

Yet still allow previously registered site members to access any pages they want?

I hope I'm being clear.
-Robert

[vicone]

How do you ensure that if they clicked the google or article link to the site that they'd be automatically redirected to your prefered landing page instead...

That particular article is part of a promotion which sends people to the optin pages. It is designed to encourage people to click through to one of the optin articles. It can't be set up as an automatic redirection as that would offend the search engines. A lot of that was done some years ago but Google and others stomped on the practice. In my case readers would land on a genuine page and could click on one of the links in the article. Those promotional articles also provide backlinks. It is a form of article marketing.

The internal pages are positioned in such a way that for the most part they are only likely to be found when following some external promotion, such as article marketing, or from a search engine page. That particular post you referred to appeared on dozens of blogs which linked back to the articles. Those following the link are welcome to enter the system - they land on an optin page. All of the onsite articles are also optin pages.

The website articles are promoted in various ways to draw traffic into the system. For instance, backlinking improves their ranking in the search engines.

Once the articles are in place, they can't just lie there, they have to be promoted to attract traffic into the system.

If you already have them on your mailing list your emails won't be sending them to an optin form, you'll be sending them to a revenue-producing page, such as a sales page. This is a special page and doesn't need to be linked from the other pages. It can be accessed only from your email if you wish. Alternatively, you could send them to a merchant's sales page as an affiliate.

For instance, if you subscribed on one of my optin pages, as you moved through the system you would meet a one-time-offer (a sales page) as well as messages containing useful information and special messages which pre-sell various products and contain links to sales pages.

If you have special information pages which are available to members only you don't want the search engines indexing them - mark them "noindex" and "nofollow". It may also be possible to close off a section of your site through your Cpanel. These pages are not part of your lead capture system.

Ivan

[CliveG]

You could set up a system where once a visitor has seen your landing page a "cookie" is set. If the "cookie" is not set then whatever page a visitor tries to reach they are shown the landing page. However, the system would need to be more complicated to deal with access by search engines.

[vicone]

If you want certain pages to be private and available only to members, a simple way of doing this is to set up a Wordpress blog and go to the privacy setting. You can set it to be not indexed and effectively closed to outsiders.

Only those getting your messages would have the address for the pages on the blog.

Ivan

[perryny]

Thanks very much for your help guys! I think I've got it now. This was a bit more complicated than I was expecting, but what else is new.

Thanks again,
-Robert