Okay – So you didn’t have time to follow the guidelines that I have been sending to you all year and now here you are in Q4 of 2007 and you need some MAJOR web traffic. Sales are a little lower than you expected, or you have a new product that everyone should know about; But the lead generation from your website is not converting well and you need more business FAST.

Pay Today – Get Visitors Today
I am not planning on teaching you how to run a Pay-Per-Click campaign, so freshen up on some of the topics that I have already written about at
Google pay per action and web analytics to make sure that you understand what you are doing and how to measure it. Google has a great PPC guide that will help you with getting started.

Drive them to your message

I am however planning on teaching you about a Search Engine Optimization technique called landing pages or in marketing lingo lead capture pages. This is the page that appears when your potential customer clicks on your advertisement or PPC result link. These optimized pages are specifically designed for a call to action, information and converting lookers into buyers. Wikipedia states that there are two types of landing pages “Reference and Transactional.” A reference landing page presents information that would be relevant to the visitor. This could be informational or instructional, but it does not convert visitors.

Focus on the goal
Right now, this is not our goal; our goal is to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction, such as filling out a form or buying the product. This is the stated goal of the transactional landing page. The purpose of the page is conversions and actions. To get people excited about the message and to generate actions and sales. The quality of the page is determined by the conversion ratios of how many people see your page vs. how many visitors complete the desired action.

You may be asking why send visitors to a landing page vs. to my home page? The quick answer is when tied to a keyword appropriate pay-per-click campaign you will be delivering exactly what your prospect is looking for without them having to search your site. You would be amazed at how effective a smart landing page can be in converting even first time views of your site.

What makes a great landing page?
An effective landing page will have a call to action, a description about your product or service and a specific desired result for the page. Remember completing an action is the goal here! So make sure that there is a form to get more information, a link to the e-commerce shopping cart or a “call us right now” action on the page. Without this you are losing the traction of your marketing dollars.

Lead the eyes of the viewers with color, bold fonts and graphics – keep them interested in your message.

Above the Fold – Keep all critical details and call to actions above the fold. The imaginary line on your screen before scrolling down.

Keep Focused – Landing pages are about ONE thing. One product, One Service and One Call to action.

No Clicks – Remove the navigation bar so that they either have to complete the action or go to another page. Don’t let them click navigation and leave your landing page. Once their gone… their gone.

I know of a number of companies that have landing pages within their site structure – www.companyABC.com/special_offer.html and I also know of successful companies that have set up alternate domains to specifically sell their products with landing pages. This would look like www.companyABCpromotion.com , whichever way to do it, remember that landing pages provide the details that you promised in your PPC advertising, and an action. Read the Google Landing Page Guidelines for more information about landing pages.

Let me know if you need any help with landing page creation or some information about PPC management. I know a number of great designers who have been able to create some amazingly high converting pages.