Landing Pages Are Not Shallow Pages
“Shallow Pages” or “Thin Content SEO”
These terms are used by SEO specialist and designed to explain stand-alone landing pages added to a website only to appeal to Google’s algorithms rather than to website visitors. Their purpose is to lure people to the landing page. Why? For whatever purpose suits the site owner, but they are not designed to meet the needs of the visitor. For example, they may attempt to covertly put some type of tracker or spyware on the visitor’s computer that was embeded in the landing page.
The defining characteristic of these landing pages are that relevant content is either completely lacking, or the content is not relevant to the person’s search intent.
What is a landing page?
Think of a landing page is a micro-website or site page that was built for a specific marketing purpose. It’s where someone lands after clicking on a search engine results page; a linked site; email or advertisements of your website. The landing page is unlike web sites in that sites are usually designed to meet several objectives and encourage information exchanges. A landing page has one objective – it is not the same as a blog post.
BrilliantDoc uses landing pages to hyper-localize searches for a service. That way our clients are competing for search engine ranking among a very few competitors instead of competitors in a broad area. The results are higher search engine rankings for those landing pages. Most competitors do not use this strategy because their agency doesn’t know it; or more likely, they don’t want to do it because it is labor intensive.
Landing pages are the best option to raise the conversion rate of your marketing campaigns and reduce the cost of acquiring leads or sales. Custom images are best, but in a pinch stock images will do.
Most importantly, a well designed landing page is designed to meet the content needs of the searcher!
Long Form or Short Form Landing Pages?
Should long landing page be shorter? Should a short landing page be longer? The definitive answer is: it depends.
A nice picture and a short description can work for a wrist watch… not so much for a $2,000 software product. On the other hand a gym chain landing page performs better if it’s quite short. People know what they want and merely need to know the gym offers what they want, its location, and cost.
This imbalance is explained in large part by the product but there is actually another thing at work: every audience consists of people who desire more information or less. Making the right choice has a major impact on conversion rates.
Long Form Landing Pages
For medically oriented landing pages, prospective patients tend to want more information. After all, you’re talking about a health or wellness issue. For example:
>A headline that communicates your help with the specific problem or concern about which the person is searching. Keyword research is needed for the landing page headline and content.
>The benefits… how important is it that I address this problem? An engaging reassurance about your expertise in this area of concern. This is not just a list of credentials.
>Value proposition. This is a combination of the benefit and how you deliver that benefit. For example, Uber’s “the smartest way to get around.”
Call to Action. You have to tell landing page visitors what they need to do next.
>Reviews are critical. What has been the experience of other people who have come to you with this problem?
>When appropriate, can you show before/after pictures to reinforce your level of expertise?
>What are the costs associated with treatment? Insurance issues?
>What can I expect my experience to be at your practice?
Short Form Landing Pages
A short form landing page is a single web page created for an online campaign that includes the main message and calls to action. A key feature of this landing page is brevity. These landing pages are designed to quickly inform visitors about the offering, while encouraging them to take some kind of action, such as submitting contact information or buying a product.
These landing pages can also be used in online marketing campaigns to drive traffic to a specific destination, such as a website or product sale. They are also commonly used as lead capture pages to gather contact information from potential customers. By including a clear call to action and a limited amount of text, short-form landing pages can be an effective way to generate leads.
The topics that should be included in a short-form landing page vary depending on the specific campaign or offer, but some common elements can help you determine what to include.
Typical components of short-form landing pages:
> A headline that clearly explains the offer being made on the landing page.
>The value proposition… like Apple iPhones, “the experience is the product.”
>A brief, engaging description of why readers should take action now.
>Images and/or videos that support the message of the landing page.
>Social media icons that allow visitors to easily share your content with others.
>An email opt-in form to capture contact information.
>A call to action that encourages visitors to take the next step.
Mobile-Friendly Landing Pages
Over 60% of searches for local goods or services are done on a mobile device. Therefore landing pages need to be made for mobile users. The smaller screen needs to be kept in mind when selecting images for these landing pages. Another key factor is load time for the landing page. Search engines heavily penalize webpages that take too long to load.
So when a landing page is developed, it’s important that it be responsive to the device being used by the searcher. Mobile traffic is a key element of any landing page campaign.
BrilliantDoc’s Landing Pages
BrilliantDoc’s use of hyper-localized landing pages has not only achieved high rankings for our client’s chosen keyword but they have also been found to boost the entire website’s traffic. A single landing page designed for a specific neighborhood ranks very high versus competitors who have marketing campaigns targeting a general area.
For medical websites, a long-form landing page that has been optimized for a specific town, neighborhood or city is the way to go. In fact, most clients find no need for pay per click ads because this approach gets them exactly what they were trying to achieve with ads. The only difference is that ads disappear when they stop spending money, while our landing page strategy continues to be a revenue generating asset long-term.
Both dental practices and other types of businesses have found our landing page strategy to work extremely well, while being very cost-effective.
By definition, they are not in any way “shallow pages” or “thin content” pages designed just for Google’s algorithm – they deliver on searcher’s intent!
Conclusion? Contact BrilliantDoc!
Contact BrilliantDoc at (888) 337-6278 or email us at [email protected]