Landing pages vs internal pages.
-
Hey everyone I have run into a problem and would greatly appreciate anyone that could weigh in on it.
I have a web client that went to an outside vendor for marketing. The client asked me to help them target some keywords and since I am new to the SEO world I have proceeded by researching the best keywords for the client. I found 6 that see excellent monthly searches. I then registered the .com and or .net domain names that match these words. I then started building landing pages that make reference to the keyword and then have links to his site to get more info.
My customer sent the first of these sites to the marketer and he says I am doing things all wrong. He says rather then having landing pages like this I should just point the domain names at internal pages to the website. He also says that I should not have different looks for the landing pages from the main site and that I should have the full site menu on each landing page.
I wanted to here what everyone here has to say about the pros and cons of the way to do this cause the guy giving the advice to me has a lower ranking site then I do and I have only started working on getting my site ranked this year. He has atleast according to him been doing this forever.
Thanks, Ron
-
I am in the US (North Carolina), my name is Dutch though...
Always good discussion, and I don't think either one is right or wrong here.
-
Put simply, the marketer sounds right. But the purchase of exact match domains is not a total loss.
What should have been done:
1. Keyword research done, but not for the keywords that just have the most traffic, but rather those that are relevant and have the most traffic. The relevance is key there.
2. Identified the content on the site that should rank for those terms.
3. If no content exists, creating it on the site so that the content answers the query of the searcher and gives a call to action.
4. Worked with the marketer to influence the links to the pages for each keyword.
What can be done now:
1. 301 redirect the domains to the pages that make sense.
2. Only use those domains for sites if there is a reason for another site to be made on the topic. If your site can do it, leave it to one site, it's less work and less link building.
3. Work with the marketer to get GOOD, relevant links to the page on the clients current site. It's not about him being better than you, it's about you guys working together.
-
I agree.. The marketer's methods are ineffective... and the OP's methods are ineffective. And, they are at odds with one another.
However, he says that he prefers the school of hard knocks.
In my opinion they are wasting client money until they come to an agreement and develop a genuine plan for marketing and SEO..
-
In my opinion, neither of these strategies is very good.
Redirecting domains like the marketer suggests will offer no benefit, SEO or otherwise.
Building content on an exact-match domain could work, but why not just try to rank for those exact match terms on the main site? Getting the new domains to rank may still take a good amount of work. If searchers do click through to those sites, they're still going to have to click again to get to the main site. This could be simplified by just doing a good job to bring searchers to the main site directly.
-
If you are already on the first page of Google with your new domain, whats the problem? Sounds like you were already headed in the right direction....
-
If you redirect it to another site with 301 the domain will disappear from google. If you like to keep it then use a 302 redirect. I hope that this helps.
-
I read the post of Rand. Is totally out of my point of view. This kind of subdoamins I know that they don't pass anything to your site. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#predictions. Read this post and you see what I mean. I mean to build subdomains of your site which include the keywords in and my main domain to be with your brand. Like this you avoid the devaluated old trick from the exact match domain, you build your brand and you have also the keyword inside the domain and not in a subdirectories as a subdomain is much powerful like a subdirectory. Me like this I am working and is going pretty well. Also the content on the subdomain must be related to the main site and to be connected between them. I think Egol can tell us if me or you is correct. Maybe we are both wrong but me I don't think so .... Anyway cheers and be happy. From where are you? Me I am from a small island called Cyprus, in Mediterranean sea, down from turkey.
-
You say that you are a beginner at SEO. That's honest.
However, you are jumping in with keyword research, registering domains, building landing pages, giving sites a diverse appearance.
I don't agree with a lot of your strategy.
In my opinion, it would be a good idea to put on the brakes.
Before you sink more of your time into things that are probably not going to work well it would be a good idea to increase your knowledge or hire someone who can get you moving with a solid plan. Your team might also need a referee.
-
I actually prefer subdirectories over subdomains.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
There is a good resource on the topic... there were a couple of good instances to use a subdomain, but it also said you wouldn't necessarily get the authority of the root (which you will with a subdirectory).
-
Here the marketer is wrong. Dont have any effect if the domains dont have authority.
-
Anyway I think you did wrong that you purchased them , you shouldnt, this what you should do was to create subdomains including the desired keyword like
http://keyword.yourdomain.com as this method will give a faster ranking for the subdomain if your main site have an authority. Now you will have to build for all domains the authority. I think you should throw them and build the subdomains. Also I have to agree with the marketer which said that should look like the main site.
yoursite.com/keyword-phrase this method Keith also got devaluated from this what I know and what I saw in action on my own domains.
Another minus of your tactic is the extra money for the domain names and hosting etc...
My method is absolutely free if your hosting provider allows you to host multiple or unlimited subdomains. For example hostgator allows me to have unlimited subdomains at no charge.
-
They have zero benefits if they dont have backlinks from niche directories or whatever related to the keyword. I have to agree with you.
-
Hi there Ron
First of all the exact match domains get devaluated from Google. You mean subdomain by the term internal pages? What you mean by the term "point domain names at internal pages" ? To redirect them to internal pages? Or to create internal pages from the keywords? Example:
or
ot to redirect the exact match domain to this one ?
please tell me some more details so I can help you...If I can !
-
Are they getting any traffic? Redirecting url's has zero SEO benefit (as far as I know), especially new domains.
If you are getting traffic, yes, redirect. If not, does it really matter? I guess if you already built links it wouldn't hurt to redirect with a 301.
-
Ok, but I have already purchased the domain names. What would be the best way to incorporate those into this scheme of things? Just redirect them to the internal pages?
-
Ok, but I have already purchased the domain names. What would be the best way to incorporate those into this scheme of things? Just redirect them to the internal pages?
-
I wouldn't consider myself an expert on this one, but I would have most likely created internal pages that have yoursite.com/keyword-phrase and optimize them, especially if the site already has some authority on the topic.
Pointing the new domains to internal pages won't do anything as they don't have any rankings yet, and you can't get any if they don't have any content (I don't think).
Just my .02
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do we still have this Page Rank / Link juice / Link equity? So this dilution concept?
Hi all, As per the traditional or standard SEO rules, we have this link juice and dilution concept. Many websites have changed their linking structure with this with the beleif "the more number of pages, the PR will get diluted". Then many websites avoided more number of pages from homepage to avoid link juice dilution. Even we followed same. But I just wonder it's still the same way Google handles websites and rankings as per the links. And many websites even avoid more number of 2nd tier/hierarchy pages to avoid link dilution. I have gone through our competitors where they been employing lot of top level pages like 2nd tier/hierarchy pages but still doing good at rankings. Please share your views and suggestions on this. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Certain PHP Pages Not Showing In SERPs
Hi all, You've all been so helpful so far, I'm hoping you can help me with our trickiest SEO question yet. Last year we migrated 7 sites into one, going from flat html to Joomla. This went fine and although we saw a slight drop in traffic, it wasn't too bad. Now however traffic has started to drop and we've been able to hone it down into a certain area of our website. Each of the 7 sites had their own page with some php code that was fed products. These products were updated everyday and were are second most popular page on the sites aprt from the home page. These pages were found in Google no problem and were an essential resource for our site. What we have found is these pages cannot be found at all, unless you type the full business name and product. If you just type the product and the location our customer is based in, we're no where, using the Moz tools it says we're not in the top 50 results. This is a bit of a shock since we used to be at least on the first page, usually quite high up. I'm a little stumped as SEO wise these pages are technically better. They offer the same functionality but in a much more SEO friendly way. I've asked our developer to check: Nothing is being blocked in robots.txt
Web Design | | HB17
The pages are being indexed
There's no strange code errors Essentially the pages can't be found even if we type the full title, for example 'customer's products in their town' to be found we have to type 'customer's products in their town and their full business name'. The top third of the page is just html text, the bottom like I mentioned is PHP and is fed data from a database which is refreshed each morning. I know our developer did some rel conical work but has assured me that's all working fine. While I know it's a new website, we've owned the domain for a while so our domain authority isn't brand new and 0, we also have pages with worse page authority that show up on page 1 no problem, so I'm leaning towards something else might not be right. Can anyone help me figure out why these pages are being indexed but not even found? Thanks!0 -
Question #2: All of my INTERNAL links in OSE are being indexed from http://www.e.com/default.asp, and all my EXTERNAL links are linked to http://www.e.com/ am I getting a fraction of the link juice because of that?????
Hey guys, sorry for the really long question, but it appears that I am losing between 50 and 75 % of my link juice to my internal pages. In OSE all main category links (left sidebar) are being indexed from the URL that includes default.asp, even though NONE of my external links include that: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FSulky-Thread-s%2F78.htm If you check the PA for http://www.uncommonthread.com/: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2F You see that it is practically double the PA of http://www.uncommonthread.com/default.asp: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FDefault.asp **Also, non of my internal menu links are being indexed. ** Look at the menu on this page: http://www.uncommonthread.com/Sulky-Thread-s/78.htm and then look at the OSE information here for the "invisible thread" item from the menu on the page above^^^: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uncommonthread.com%2FSulky-monofilament-s%2F54.htm Thanks SOOO much! Pre-thumbs and thanks to anyone that can lend me a seconds worth of advice! Thanks again for your time, Tyler A.
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
How keywords per page to keep from being "spammy"?
Hi all, I am currently doing a marketing internship for a B2B company that does all sorts of out-sourced recruiting work. I have some experience with SEO, but not completely confident. My first question is, I know Google sees websites that load up on keywords as "spammy", so what is the appropriate number of keywords per page? Currently, I was thinking about this setup: 1 keyword for the URL 1 keyword per alt tag (1 per page, at most) 2 keywords per each title tag (approximately 4 pages that I am going to follow internally, not following the "about us" page). After that, I was thinking of adding 2-3 more keywords in each meta description and 2-3 in the body copy. That would equate to 6-8 keywords on each page, is this too many and should keywords be repeated (on the same page or across multiple pages)? Since this website is brand new (zero links), would it make sense to nofollow all of the internal links so that they homepage can gain ranking as quickly as possible within Google?
Web Design | | wlw20090 -
Internal Linking
Hi, I have a site which has a Pr5 index page, however level 2 pages only have a PR rank of 3 is this a sign of poor internal linking structure or maybe this is the result of too many on page links? I would appreciate any ideas that you might have! Kyle
Web Design | | kyleNeedham0 -
Why is this page removed from Google & Bing indices?
This page has been removed from indices at Bing and Google, and I can't figure out why. http://www.pingg.com/occasion/weddings This page used to be in those indices There are plenty of internal links to it The rest of the site is fine It's not blocked by meta robots, robots.txt or canonical URL There's nothing else to suggest that the page is being penalized
Web Design | | Ehren0 -
Crawl Budget vs Canonical
Got a debate raging here and I figured I'd ask for opinions. We have our websites structured as site/category/product This is fine for URL keywords, etc. We also use this for breadcrumbs. The problem is that we have multiple categories into which a category fits. So "product" could also be at site/cat1/product
Web Design | | Highland
site/cat2/product
site/cat3/product Obviously this produces duplicate content. There's no reason why it couldn't live under 1 URL but it would take some time and effort to do so (time we don't necessarily have). As such, we're applying the canonical band-aid and calling it good. My problem is that I think this will still kill our crawl budget (this is not an insignificant number of pages we're talking about). In some cases the duplicate pages are bloating a site by 500%. So what say you all? Do we just simply do canonical and call it good or do we need to take into account the crawl budget and actually remove the duplicate pages. Or am I totally off base and canonical solves the crawl budget issue as well?0 -
Seo for flash home page?
I have a client who insists their home page be a single graphic image of their logo with php menus linking to all of the other pages up top. This appears to me to be an seo nightmare. They seem to be unwilling to have anything to do with changing the appearance and want to rely on seo for "all the other pages" on the site. What's an SEO to do in this situation? Is it possible to have a flash image that lands on a "homepage" for google to crawl, rather than a single image? What's the best seo approach here?
Web Design | | peaceland0