RealTown's RealTalk

I am working with a resort property that offers fractional ownership. They have a nice website but it has a landing page that several colleagues have never gotten past. You have to click in just the right spot to get into the full website. At first glance, it seems that this landing page is not helping them. Are there SEO reasons for using a landing page? Besides the splash, why should a website have a landing page?

Thanks
Kris Biessener, e-Pro REALTOR
RE/MAX North Country
Hackensack MN
kris@mncabinfinder.com

Hi Kris,

A landing page should be used to get a visitor to do something. This may include purchasing a product, visiting another page, sending an email, or performing some other type of action.
It's good to use landing pages for seo because it makes for a more user friendly experience.
For example if your website displays listings for 3 bedroom banked owned condos, you want search engine visitors who have searched for this term to land on a page that includes 3 bedroom banked owned condos. This is preferable to the visitor landing on your home page which may have many options to navigate before arriving at the appropriate web page.

Kris wrote:
I am working with a resort property that offers fractional ownership.
They have a nice website but it has a landing page that several
colleagues have never gotten past. You have to click in just the right
spot to get into the full website. At first glance, it seems that this
landing page is not helping them. Are there SEO reasons for using a
landing page? Besides the splash, why should a website have a landing page?
__________________

Kris, while splash pages were trendy some years ago, my sense is that
people find them to be annoying waste of time. For most of my projects
now, I prefer to put all the essential info, with easy navigation, right
on the home page.

I use the term "landing page" somewhat differently from "splash page".
To me, a splash page is mostly decorative or entertaining and may
consist predominantly of a Flash movie. I use the term "landing page"
to refer to a page that is optimized for a certain keyphrase(s), and it
may be just one page within a site that otherwise is optimized for
other keyphrases. Typically a landing page will include a "call to
action".

Landing pages are handy when you're trying to optimize a site overall
for very competitive keyphrases. The page below, for example, ranks #12
in Google for "Parkchester Condos" even though the site does not yet
rank especially well for the highly competive "Bronx NY homes for sale".
Similarly, the Throgs Neck page ranks #7 on Google for both "Throgs Neck
homes for sale" and Throggs Neck homes for sale". After my client fired
his well-known SEO company, we increased traffic to this site by about
500% in just a few months, mostly by adding lots of landing pages like
these, optimized for less competitive "longtail" keyphrases.

http://www.wesellbronxhomes.com/Parkchester_Condos/page_2211330.html

One way to test the effectiveness of the company's splash page is to
install Google Analytics (if it's not already in use), then check it for
the "bounce rate" on the page. That will tell you the number of people
that visit the page and leave without going any further into the site. A
lower bounce rate is preferable to a higher bounce rate.

Suzanne

--
Suzanne Hathcock Stephens
Point2Agent Qualified Web Site Designer
http://www.SuzStephens.com
360-666-0881

Thanks for the input. I guess what they have would be a splash page. They appear to be well optimized and when they show up in searches, the splash page isn't there. I asked him if he had google analytics and he said yes but we got sidetracked and didn't finish the conversation. Now I can ask him his bounce rate and I'll sound like I know what I'm talking about! lol

Thanks,
Kris Biessener
RE/MAX North Country

Kristine,

Actually a home page that is not much more than a flashy display with some place to click to "enter the site" is very bad for SEO. I'm surprised that the site's internal pages are being ranked!

You could safely advise them that a flashy home page shouldn't be used. The search engines need to be able to read the content on the home page, and the content should be optimized for their main keyword phrases. You can have flash on the page, but it can't be the only thing.

The bounce rate will tell you how many frustrated visitors just leave the site, and you'll know how much better the site could rank in the search engine results once you remove the splash page.

Good Luck!

Kathleen
www.BuildRealEstateResults.com

Thanks Kathleen. I knew he was losing people who couldn't figure out how to get in, but SEO is even more important. It's helpful to have the technical explanation for why he should drop that page.

Regards,
Kris Biessener, e-PRO REALTOR
RE/MAX North Country

OK, here is an example of a slightly intense splash/intro page:

http://www.iccm-1.org/

@RG said:

"This splash/intro is very intense, but does it have any effect in ranking?"

I would highly doubt it. As a matter of fact the main site seems to also be 100% flash, so if you view source you don't see much content either.

Malcolm Waring, REALTOR^®, e-PRO
Pocono Real Estate

Malcolm Waring wrote:
@RG said:

http://www.iccm-1.org/

"This splash/intro is very intense, but does it have any effect in ranking?"

I would highly doubt it. As a matter of fact the main site seems to also
be 100% flash, so if you view source you don't see much content either.

______________________

While Google can index Flash text now, the other search engines would
still be left out in the cold. Plus, I -- for one -- have not
sufficiently explored the technical in's and out's of making Flash text
recognizable by Google that I would attempt it right now. Google doesn't
seem to be indexing the text in this site.

Suzanne

--

Suzanne Hathcock Stephens
Point2Agent Qualified Web Site Designer
http://www.SuzStephens.com
360-666-0881