Will PPC elsewhere on my domain help my organic SEO?

[GregDixson]

I have an e-commerce site with a small product line which an on-going organic SEO campaign.

As a side project, I'm planning on doing some PPC testing with a highly converting product squeeze page, which I'll run Google ads to gain traffic. (this is PPC only and for this page I am not concerned with organic SEO traffic - although of course the page itself will be fully optimized).

I am wondering whether to run this squeeze page on a sub-domain or sub-directory of the existing site, OR to host it on a completely fresh domain?

I would like to know if as side-effect my existing Website benefit 'organically' from some of the PPC traffic, helping with it's domain authority, etc.,? or could this possibly do any harm?

p.s. Bear in mind this is not going to be a page visible on the on the main site itself, it's a separate entity for PPC.

Would be great to have some expert Moz eyes on this and opinions. Thanks!

[irvingw]

If it was a real page on your site linked to in the main nav it could help SEO because the more people who see your page the greater the chance that people will share the link and talk about it which could in turn benefit SEO.

The way you are doing it though I don't see any benefit, unless the PPC landing page passes some PR and traffic to the main site via navigational links. What is the reason for not hosting it on the main domain?

[GregDixson]

thanks Irving for your response.

The page is just a test for the moment, so that's the reason I'm cautious to put it on the main domain & feature in the navigation, etc.

I'm aware of how PPC can help with organic SEO in a more standard setting with the page featured as usual, and yes it would certainly be nice to get some added PR as side-effect.

I'm all for any benefit that may trickle through as a side-effect, but it's not a primary concern, unless of course it does harm.

[irvingw]

You can still put it on the main domain and have it noindex,followed and orphaned. It can link back to the main nav but not be linked to from the main site. That would be completely safe and the fact that it is on the domain and not some other unrecognizable domain would help with credibility and would be one less variable which could be a culprit for causing a lower conversion rate.

[PowerToolWorld]

Hi Greg.

No. Would be my short answer. Outside of what Irving already mentioned.

But I would also consider reading this post from SEER. I've noticed similar trends when allowing ppc landing pages to be index. Just be sure to avoid self cannibalising (is that a word?) keywords.

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/how-creating-crawlable-landing-pages-increased-quality-score

rgds

Kyle

[ThompsonPaul]

There's no risk to having the PPC landing on your main site, Greg. The scenario you're describing is extremely common. Often it is even done with multiple landing pages that are customised for different PPC ads, or are specifically targeted for different media buys. (Most sites build these in a special directory which they no-index in robots.txt to keep the engines from wasting time crawling them)

The reason these pages are often kept separate (ie not in the navigation) is to keep organic visits from polluting the data about the PPC visits. (or other media buys).

Simply getting traffic to the page from your PPC won't do anything to help your rankings (Otherwise people would be buying PPC specifically to game that process, wouldn't they?) As Irving says - the only organic benefit would come if some of those PPC visitors then shared out or linked to your landing page.

If you truly want to split out your landing page to isolate it to PPC only, just add a meta-robots no-index tag to the header of the page to tell the engines not to index it.

So... if a real page that would benefit other site visitors and you DON'T' mind PPC traffic mixing with organic - build as a regular page on your site and linked internally as well as from PPC.

If purely for PPC and you don't want it used by regular visitors, build on your main site, don't link to it, and add meta-robots no-index to keep it out of the SERPs.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Paul

P.S. One of the main arguments against having PPC (or any other) marketing landing page integrated into the regular site content via linking is that a landing page, by definition, is trying to get the visitor to do one specific thing. This usually means stripping out all the rest of the usual site template, like navigation, search, additional footer functionality etc. This helps focus the PPC visitor on the task you want them to complete, but makes an inadequate experience for the organic visitor who wants to then explore multiple pages of your site.

[GregDixson]

Thanks very much for your explanation Paul. Makes total sense! Good to know this is quite common and no harm will come of it.

For this initial test I will add the no-index and keep it in silo, which will also make measurements more precise - not mixing traffic.

your P.S. is exactly why I'm proposing to treat the page as a separate entity (at least for now). I see it as a high conversion page for visitors to do one thing - click Buy, and not to start browsing around the rest of the site.

thanks again for your reply.

Greg

[GregDixson]

Interesting stats there Kyle. thanks!