Transcript

Welcome back, folks, for another episode, another video. In this video, I’m talking about what are search landing pages. Something that I’ve often recommended to clients in order to scale websites, in order to grow traffic. It’s often used as a tactic primarily to target a very niche audience or a very specific set of search queries by producing content, by producing relevant landing pages only accessible via search, search engine.

So is a little bit of a tactic which can be used, like I said, to scale websites, to grow the number of pages within a site, and tactically positioning them for specific set of search queries. So I’m going to run through an example, give you some hints and tips on what you can do in order to get started, and some of the things to watch out for as well.

So firstly, you may have read over the last year or so about Google trying to stop what they call doorway pages. To be honest, this is very similar to doorway pages, but they’re not as spammy. So doorway pages were often used by…an example might be solar panel companies. They created lots of pages on their site, where if you search for solar panel companies, [inaudible 00:01:44], they would come up. And there would be a page that is the same as Loughborough, Leicester, Derby, Sheffield, Coventry. It’s the same page, same content. The only thing that changes is the place name on that page. So this really is focused around a smaller set of queries and being much more relevant and much more value-adding, which we’ll come on to shortly.

So let me run through an example. You often get people who are searching for products for their specific application. So they will have your product, they will need your product, but it will be going in a specific project where there’s a specific requirement. So you’ve got dude over here who has a specific requirement. He then goes over to Google and googles for his product for a specific application. Hope that makes sense.

So an example might be decking for schools. Now, you may be thinking, “Okay, well, decking is a piece of decking. You know, it’s the same piece of wood whether it goes in a garden or whether it goes in school or a pub or a restaurant.” The thing is dude over here searches for product for his need. And it happens. I see this all the time across many different products. People search for their product, for their application. And they’re trying to narrow down the choices, having to filter out all the information, and stop themselves…or try and reduce the need or research time to actually think about, “Well, this is a great product, but does it actually fit where I need it to go?” So this searching by application helps reduce the number of options if you like.

Another example is insulation for. It might be underfloor heating. It might be on a pitched roof. It might be in a wall. It might have really kind of specific requirement. Guttering for high-rise building, bungalow. People search for their product for their particular application. And this is where search landing pages come in.

And these pages when…so when dude over here searches for something and lands on this search page, this page is actually so specific to his query or her query, that they don’t really need to navigate anywhere else. So this page has got a nice image that is relevant to that particular application. There’s some supporting text, maybe some key features and benefits. You’ve got downloads. You’ve got a video maybe. You’ve got a sample so you can try. Maybe you’ve got a download to a case study or a technical manual, and then you’ll have a call to action form. So you want to try and convert that user.

So you may only ever have one or two people access this page in a month. But the value of that enquiry will be very, very high. It will be someone wanting your product and for the application that you won that enquiry for. So you’re reducing the enquiries where they don’t know whether they’re needed, but you’re increasing the number of enquiries where it’s the right product for the right application.

Again, that page is not accessible through the website. So somebody comes through the homepage, they can’t get to it. They can only get to this page via Google. And you want to make sure that that page is ranked number one or number two in Google, and it’s optimised with the right page title, right heading, the copy is well-written, it’s linked to from other areas maybe. But again, you don’t really want people finding this page other than from Google itself because it’s so relevant. It’s so niche.

So the three things to look out for here is specific. Think about your product and your application, and tailor that page so it’s very specific to that query.

Value add. Make sure you’re adding value on that page. Make sure that that page contains everything that they need. Technical tables, performance tables, technical data sheets, BBA certificates. Whatever it may for that specifier or that contractor to be able to take that information away with them.

Call to actions. Don’t forget call to actions. I’ve spoken about this in the previous video. People who come here have a very high intent, or they will have a very high intent, to want to request a sample. They’re ready. This is the right product for the right application. Now, you’ve got to try and make that page work hard enough to try and convert them there and then.

So hopefully, that gives you a little bit of an idea on how search landing pages can help. You can particularly use them for schools, hospitals, roadways, highways, bridges, residential buildings, high-rise buildings, bungalows as mentioned before. The options are endless. But what you will want to do is make sure that you’re not constantly duplicating yourself. You’re making changes. You’re making amendments, and each page is relevant to that query.

Hopefully, over time, you will see ranks getting better for these pages. Maybe their traffic is a lot better as well. But generally, it’s the quality of the enquiry that we’re bothered about here, not necessarily traffic. It’s the quality of the enquiry.

So as mentioned before, if you’ve got any questions, do tweet me @priteshpatel9. Contact me through the website. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to get in touch. I’ll be quite happy to help you out, pop you an email or maybe even record a video with some of your questions, and I’ll happily answer them.