what is a landing page?

[Rich]

i was reading some stuff about using googles paid ads to send visitors to my sites and the article i was reading said that i should probably use a landing page but i am not sure what that is

i did a quick search and found a couple of other sites that talked about them but they never really went in to much detail about how to set one up apart from it needing to look good and sell to my site visitors what i am promoting

do you have any landing page examples i can take a look at to get an idea of what sort of stuff i should use on them - i dont want to copy yours just see how they work as i dont really get what they are supposed to be - do these pages work just like my regular freebie site home page works or do i put lots of links to my sites on them for example

[GayGeek]

A landing page is, as I define it, a page that is specifically tailored to meet the needs of users that were expecting a certain set of information when they click on a link.

Case in point. If you were to Google "drill bits", there's a good chance you'd get an adWord by Amazon.com or eBay. If you were to click on that link, you'd want to go to a page that's about drill bits. Not land on the front page of Amazon or eBay.

Both Amazon and eBay have drill bits for sale, but if users don't land on a page about them, chances are that the user is going to hit the back button. In that case they have:

- Wasted their per-click money on the Google AdWord
- Wasted their server time/bandwidth
- Annoyed a user, who will file the website name in the back of their mind. That user will in the future be less likely to click on links heading to that website website because he has learned from experience that those links tend not to take him to where he wants to go.

The same concept applies internally on websites as well with definite implications for adult websites. You see a small or medium sized picture of a model and notice the picture is clickable. You click expecting to see a larger version of the picture, but suddenly find yourself looking at something else entirely (usually the join page!).

Links, when properly done, should always give the user an idea of what to expect on the other side. "Click to join now" is explanatory. The user expects to land on a join page. "Click for hot videos" is not explanatory if it leads to a signup page.

If adult webmasters were truly smart, they'd design their sites so that when users click on a picture expecting to see a larger version, the site would open a page with both a larger version of that picture AND the join information. Not just put the users on a generic join page. I am 100% convinced webmasters would experience significantly higher traffic conversion rates if they did.

In short: landing pages are pages tailor-made to the expectations of users clicking on a specific link. The term usually applies to traffic from one website to another, but good design applies this concept equally for both intra- and extra-website linkage.

--Aaron

[Bill]

What he said.

Using google adwords to get traffic to your freesites will end up costing you a cartload and making deeply negative profit.

Typically one might make a "landing page" - really kind of a private tour - for the paysite one wanted to sell, and buy adwords traffic to send to that private tour.

So, landing page kinda equals private tour - tho it could be designed to do other things for mainstream, for the adult biz the landing pages are usually these private tours.

[Rich]

oh wow thank you for the great information so i basically make a page just for the keyword that i am using on google and then put one or two sponsor paysite links on that page that match the keyword too

[GayGeek]

Yes, make sure the page the traffic "lands" on your site is relevant to the keyword.

Before you do that though, I'd take out those keywords and just point it at a generic page for a week or two. Your conversions to sales will be a little low for two weeks, but that's actually fine. Google is absolutely merciless about not allowing adWords for any website that even vaguely suggests a "teen porn concept".

We took out about 20 AdWords two years ago on a variety of keywords relating to adult website names. (We run a review website, after all). Google terminated 60% of them within a week. In the intervening two years Google has periodically invalidated other keywords, giving us just three words left. I wound up canceling one of them anyway -- it was only giving us a few dozen clicks per month, and the website had gone downhilll during the intervening time.

So basically we have two words left. One we're doing okay with -- a small profit. The other we have done extremely well with.

I'd go out today and multiply my adWord budget by a factor of 10 if I thought Google would let me post the words. I am very hesitant to post new words though because I don't want to attract the attention of anyone at Google who might decide to revisit the two words we've got left.

Then again Google is very heavily into automated solutions. It's entirely possible that a human being never even looked into the matter and some sort of sophisticated algorithm caught us.

--Aaron

[Bill]

A lot of people have lost money on adwords, so be a bit cautious.

It depends on wether you have money to spend - but expect a bit of a learning curve.

I'd suggest starting with more exotic keywords and keyphrases, and then move into the keywords with more (and expensive) clicks.