Are your visitors landing in the wrong place?
Well, my website has been bouncing around Google’s search listings for ‘copywriter’ for the last few weeks; however, I’m pleased to announce that it now seems to be stabilising on the lower rungs of page one.
I’m not totally convinced how I’ve managed to get there, and I’m not sure why some of the other sites deserve to be there either, but at least now I’m receiving a steady flow of targeted traffic.
I’m not popping the champagne just yet though as it’s actually my blog which has become my landing page, and not my main business website.
My business might be well sign posted, but when potential clients arrive expecting to find a copywriting service site they simply turn around and walk back out the door, annoyed at not finding what they were looking for.
After contacting my local IT support network I was given some excellent advice by two local experts, Ed Stivala from www.n3wmedia.com and Andy Bircumshaw from networkned.co.uk. Their thorough responses crystallised the fact that my blog has now become my business landing page, and I’m going to have to do something about it.
The problem is finding a format to satisfy both types of visitors.
I have the info hungry surfers looking for answers to their questions, and I have potential business clients looking for a straightforward copywriting service.
I’ve tried adding a copywriting service link to my header, but only 1/10 ever seems to click through. I think a lot of my business service visitors probably aren’t blog savvy, and view them as just online diaries rather than professional marketing tools.
However, my quandary is not an isolated case. With Google indexing pages rather than sites this means people can land on a variety of pages, and not just the carefully composed home page.
Is it time to reconsider how we structure our websites? Is the landing page dead?
The Blog Business Summit certainly seems to think so. Jason Preston highlighted an article in the New York Times discussing how people were now bypassing home pages:
‘media sites are discovering that many people are ignoring their home pages where ad rates are typically highest and using Google to jump to the specific pages they want’Â
Jason advocates the potential death of the home page as people are just batting it aside in their hunt for information. This might suit information seekers, but what about people looking for a service?
As discussed by Brian Clark this week, landing pages are needed to communicate the value of your offer. You have to get across the benefits of your product or service quickly and succinctly in a short space of time. A big part of achieving this is through your headline, which means for a start my blog title is going to have to get a lot longer.
The problem I now face is getting across the benefit laden features of a landing page without distorting the Copywriter’s Crucible’s blog format for readers.
Integrating the other pages of my business website into my blog should be easy. This gives me an excuse to take a hacksaw to some of its content, and not just a surgeon’s knife. It’s just finding a way to capture business service visitors without a traditional landing page that might be tricky.
If anybody can suggest to me some sites which are as effective as blogs as they are at landing pages then I’d certainly be interested in taking a look.
So, is Jason from Blog Business Summit correct; is the home page dead?
Looks like I’ve got no choice but to try and find out.