Though I have been blogging for nearly 2 years, I am a SEO newbie. I never really made any effort to optimize my blogs until recently when i realise that I am not going very far despite the 2 years. In the course of my recent interest in optimization, there is one tip offered by gurus and guru wannabes, saying it is crucial to have a good landing page. I was quite stumped and puzzled by this idea of having a good landing page for my blogs. Doesn’t all blogs let visitors land on their homepage? As far as my knowledge allows me, I did not know it was possible to created a dedicated landing page for my blogs until the arrival of Wordpress 2.2 where we are given a choice to create a seperate homepage.
Maybe that is because I am ignorant and don’t know how, but the lingering question is why do we need a special landing page if we are blogging? It was later that I came to understand that what they are saying is targeted at marketing websites and the skies cleared up above me. Of course these sites need a good landing page. They need to pull and keep their visitors who lands there so that they will explore more on what they have to offer in their sites.
Does a Landing Page apply to Blogging?
All the blogs I visited, from the very successful to the very new, I haven’t seen any one blog that have a dedicated landing page. Even professional bloggers lets their visitors land on their homepage where their latest post is displayed. Some sets their homepage to display 3 to 5 of their latest posts. Can that be considered a good landing page? I guess so, if all the post shown are good and worth a read.
There are also gurus that encourages us to use the “read more” function when we post. Indeed it does increases page impressions considerably if your opening paragraph is attractive enough to make people want to continue reading. On other other hand there are some who advises against these practise as they say it might discourage readers from continuing further.
A good landing page as defined by experts as a page that would grab the attention of your visitors. How anyone goes about creating such a page is a subjective issue with vastly different ideas and approach. Taking the core concept, my opinion now about a good landing page in my blog will be one that has good entertaining articles. Since our homepage or landing page always showcases the latest articles, I think it is sufficient to say that to have a good landing page for our blog, we must always write good entertaining articles. I hope my deduction is right.
Good landing pages are effective only when you have a specific action you’d want your visitor to perform.
Usually, this would be one of the following:
- Clicking on a “Buy” link
- Entering an email address to subscribe to something
- Downloading something
Most blogs don’t have such actions that the blog owner would want visitors to perform, and thus this makes landing pages somewhat irrelevant for blogs.
Still dun understand… never mind, if it matters, I’ll seek advice from you. No charge har?