words, punctuation, keywords, and placement to hit the “sweet spot” in PPC advertising.
And even once you do, you’ll likely find yourself having to readjust the ad frequently
because of changes in your products or services. Plan a little time (an hour or two) to put
into your PPC ad campaign. Only through experimentation and testing can you achieve
PPC success.PPC advertising has plenty of appeal. It’s quick, it’s effective, and it’s nowhere near as expensive
as other types of advertising. But don’t be fooled. PPC advertising isn’t all sunshine and light. It
requires work and commitment to find the methods and combinations that work for you. Once
you’ve done that, you have to make the click worth the visitor’s time. And you do that by creating
great landing pages.Create Great Landing Pages
Landing pages are those pages that potential site visitors reach when they click your PPC (or other)
advertisement. These pages are usually not connected to your web site in any way. They are not
linked through the site map, nor are they linked through the body of your web site. And to ensure
that they’re fully disconnected from all other methods of discovery, landing pages should also not
be spidered (which is accomplished using Robots.txt, but that’s covered in Chapter 16).It sounds like a disaster in the making right? It would seem that it would be. But the truth is, these
landing pages are designed for two things: first, a landing page is designed specifically to reach a
goal conversion when someone clicks your link; second, landing pages are designed as a way for
you to keep track of how well your PPC ads draw not just qualified traffic, but converting traffic.If the goal of SEO is to draw more qualified traffic that converts more often than organic traffic,
landing pages are your way to monitor whether or not that’s happening. A landing page also gives
you an opportunity to create a relationship with a new site visitor who has clicked your link for
one specific purpose. You meet that person’s needs, and then you can funnel the user into the
remainder of your site to see what else you have available.There is some debate as to the value of landing pages that don’t link to any other source on the
web site. Some experts think that once you’ve pulled visitors to the landing page, then the more
you engage them, and the more likely they are to return to your site and eventually reach a goal
conversion. That may be true.Using that assumption, there would seem to only be one kind of landing page: the landing page
(like the one shown in Figure 7-1) associated with a PPC campaign. However, there is a second type
of landing page — organic — that’s primarily for users within your own web site who click through a
link or advertisement you have created. These pages are designed a little differently than the landing
pages used for PPC ads. Essentially, however, these pages require the same efforts during creation
and testing that landing pages for PPC ads require.119
Increasing Keyword Success 7
75002c07.qxd:Layout 1 11/7/07 9:38 AM Page 119