Landing page structure and navigation with respect to main site

7 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi, first some background:

I have a corporate site that is very much tailored to people typing in a company brand name and browsing around. As such, all the "product" and "solutions" pages are quite sharp, focused and use terms that industry insiders would understand, but aren't that good for SEO because they'd be too general without the context of our home page and "about us" page.

I would like to start doing AdWords PPC and am aware that I need to have focused and relevant landing pages to keep my CPC down. Therefore, I would like to set up some additional landing pages on the same domain as my corporate site, which I would send people to when they click on the ads. They might also work quite well in terms of capturing organic traffic for people typing in generic, but still relevant (i.e. non branded) keywords.

I'm not sure if I should offer any navigation from the landing pages to the main site, or from the main site to the landing pages. My feeling is that adding navigation to the main site may reduce the conversion rate and adding navigation from the main site to the landing pages is (from a user perspective) not really needed, and would just clutter up the UI, but I don't want to do anything that will be bad for SEO or Quality Score.

I am considering maybe just a single home page link on the landing pages in order to not make it too obvious/distracting, and if it turns out that Google requires we link back to our landing pages from our site, then maybe I could try using footer links instead, so that its not too "in your face".

What do you normally do in this instance?
#landing #main #navigation #page #respect #site #structure
  • Profile picture of the author ajmalkhan
    i have never traid this in my whole but you can split test with or without nav bar
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  • Profile picture of the author JosephI
    Depending on the business and what I'm trying to achieve, I've set up different landing page templates within the site: menu only, partial menu only, footer only, etc that I can use at will.
    I use them with a purpose in mind and not specifically in the common Landing Page as generally known.
    More like showcasing a product with little distraction.

    I suppose you could switch them off and split test manually, but for that you may be better off using a service like LeadPages or other similar.
    Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author MarkHazeldine
    Ok. Do you know if Google penalises you, or lowers your Quality Score for not having landing pages linked to or from the main site?
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  • Profile picture of the author JosephI
    Always hard to predict exactly what Google does but for my purposes I always like to have the landing pages linked to my site if I'm using them in a business environment and not IM.
    I think for the most part people are pretty internet savvy today and I don't want to turn them off.
    I would think you would do well if the LP was very relevant and had good new content.
    No guarantees when it comes to this stuff.
    Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author MarkHazeldine
    Thanks Joseph. What about linking back to the landing pages from the main site? I think my landing pages could be relevant to browsing visitors, however they will likely be able to get all of the info they really need from the main product/solutions pages, and I am concerned about cluttering up the main site.
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  • Profile picture of the author JosephI
    Your call. Depends on what you're doing.
    At times I put a link in the menu or submenu if I want to send them there
    and see what I'm promoting in an uncluttered page that holds their attention.
    I don't have any rule of thumb. Change it if it doesn't work.
    I'm blown away at times as to what works.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarkHazeldine
    Ok fair enough. I will split test it! Thanks for the tips.
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