Link Building and Landing Pages

[bmackrell]

I'm embarking on my first link building campaign and I was wondering if its good practice to develop a specific landing page (a focused summary page) like I do in my PPC campaigns or should I use the URL to my homepage?

[DougRoberts]

Hi Bill, I can see what you're thinking, but consider this. Unlike PPC campaigns, where visitors will be arriving via the advertising links, the idea behind link building is to indirectly gain traffic, by using an enhanced link profile in the hope that search engines will rank your pages higher and get more organic search traffic arriving on your site, not from the links themselves.

That said, if you can get some direct referral too then that's a bonus! (Sometimes these direct referrals, why lower in volume can actually be more valuable / have a higher conversion rate so don't ignore these.)

Ideally you'll be trying to get good quality links to the page (or pages) on your website that you want to rank highly for your chosen keywords. If you can get links with relevant anchor text then this should help support the relevancy of the page.

When trying to build links, it's a lot easier to get people to links to content that is of interest, useful, or share-worthy and related to the subject mater of their own sites.Of course a lot depends on the subject matter/nature of the site you're trying to promote.

What are you trying to achieve with your link building? What are your goals for the site?

[mjtaylor]

Could you say more about what kind of link building you plan to do? I can't imagine that you need a landing page, unless you want to track the traffic from the campaign and/or the links obtained ...  then a landing page would make sense.

[AnthonyMangia]

Although it isn't inconceivable to create a landing page specifically for one linkbuilding campaign, and I'm sure I could figure out a time and a place for that, linkbuilding is generally an activity that is done to an entire website.  Starting out from the very top...

First, figure out who your target visitor is.  Then, thoroughly research exactly what keywords you wish to rank for organically (based on relevance to these target visitors, estimated traffic from these keywords, available conversion rate information, and level of competition).  Once you know what keywords you need to go after, figure out how these keywords work with your current content.  Sometimes you can simply assign your target keywords to relevant existing content, or repurpose current content to fit in with your target keywords.  Usually you have to create new content, at least to some extent, to target keywords on your wishlist.  In many ways, that's the same thing as building a landing page specifically for a linkbuilding campaign.

Once you've got your content and keywords all squared away, linkbuilding generally does not focus on one specific page, but on a wide variety of important pages.  Part of Google's algorithm is not just the authority and trust of a given page, but the authority and trust of the entire domain, so it is beneficial to build links to each important page on your website.  Because of a variety of factors, most websites have a majority of their links pointed at their homepage, however other pages containing important information, great content, or any other type of linkbait typically have large amounts of links pointed at them as well - hence the reason why most people around SEOmoz will recommend content-based linkbuilding strategies.

Try poking around SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer and checking out a few different websites.  Analyze the nature of their link profile, where the links are headed, what their top content is, the anchor text they've been using, and how different webpages and websites compare in terms of link metrics like domain authority and trust.  See if you can deconstruct how these websites built or earned their most valuable links.

[bmackrell]

Thanks for the feedback Doug.  My link building effort is one of several components I'm working on to start getting a better overall ranking on my site.  Originally I was thinking it would make sense to create a landing page but think that was just a knee-jerk reaction from my PPC experience.  Pointing someone to the homepage just seemed odd.  I guess the real issue I've come to terms with is I need more relevant content on my homepage.

[bmackrell]

based on my business it will be pretty hard to find relevant links other than directories.  Long term I need to create relationships and partnerships with companies that have related services but not competitive.

[bmackrell]

thanks Anthony!  I do agree it all comes down to content.  I'm going to have to make sure I enhance what I have a create some new fresh content that would make sense to link to.