We Are Designers

search engine optimization

OK, so SEO is such a buzz word in the web industry now that it’s difficult to tell when people are peddling real “insider information“, or just letting you thin your wallet for some re–worded — well understood basics. Just so we’re clear, I’m about to do the latter. I have no great experience nor do I have a buddy at Google. But what I do have is occasion to learn from trial and error some of the little things that make a great game–plan for the right people seeing your site in a search. I’m still learning, so as I pick things up, I’ll dish out a few to you.

Qualifiers are officially out of the way.

The topic for today: Landing Pages. Google has been developing and marketing their Adwords and Adsense products pretty heavily. It’s a great way to send focused traffic to your site. So what do you do with your visitors when they get to your site? From an adwords ad do they come right to your homepage? If so — is that the best way to keep them there. Lets develop an example…

You own a restaurant. You also do catering, banquets in your restaurant and provide a space for meetings. Let’s say someone “Googles” wedding reception and your ad pops up. They visit your site and you pay your premium price to Google to have them there. What they see is probably a beautiful shot of your restaurant and a paragraph (hopefully written for search engines), talking about the great atmosphere in the restaurant. That’s not what a the potential bride is looking for. She want to know about reception places, so — on to the back button and a different site.

A landing page is the concept of creating a custom page for your ads to point to so your visitor gets just what they need immediately. Once your visitor has been assured that this is pertinent to their particular problem, then they are free to peruse your pleasant place on the electronic pavement. With so much content out there, users get frustrated easily with being mislead. A landing page is an easy way to make your visitors more confident that their time on the site will be useful. It is also a great excuse to write some copy engineered to attract organic searches. These pages should be simple and packed with SEO basic techniques. Easy modifications are also important. As we know, search engines like to see that we are updating our content. Keep them simple an make one for each of your Adwords ads, (or at least each category of ad).

If you are a designer that has a website peddling your wares. You MUST keep up on the site SEO and SEM. There are so many of us out there, the ones who spend the time on marketing to specific targets wind up on top. Make sure you identify in several places in your site where you are located. Including City, State, Region and Country. This helps crawlers get you the traffic that wants to hire you. Having a landing page for each of your general talents is a good idea. Don’t include things that you would rather not work in. IE – strictly print designers, don’t create a landing page for Flash animation, (this also leaves some work for the rest of us). Use your marketing skills to identify your target audiences and create pages that appeal to individualized markets.

It seems simple, but investigate for yourself. There are quite a few sites out there that aren’t taking advantage of customized pages. Be one of the prepared and serve your visitors what they ordered.