making a landing page

[rezzy]

I had always heard about "landing pages", but I am curious about them a bit more. Are landing pages meant to be very targeted pages that people land on? For example, the people here would land on a page that targets their specfic wants and needs?

Or is it a more general home page or something similar?

[SteveC]

Landing pages are normally used with Google Adwords, the idea is that a landing page contains information specific to the particular advertisement... it contains addittional info and a call to action... and if designed correctly a landing page can more than double the responces from a Google advertising campaign.

[vangogh]

Landing pages are just like Steve said and like you surmised. Usually they're pages with a singular and focused goal.

However the term can also mean any page someone might land on in which case they are in a sense like a home page. Someone can land on any page of your site so certain basic information (logo, tagline, navigation) should be on every page.

Which landing page people mean when they talk about landing pages needs to be taken from the context of what else they're saying. I think that's where your confusion might be coming from.

[rezzy]

Steven, Ive seen landing pages referred to in several senses. I always thought it was for a specific market, and specific purpose.

Not that I am looking to start using Google Ad Sense, but are there any good tools to finding good keywords and placing them on Ad Sense?

[vangogh]

Any of the usual SEO tools would work. I like the Google AdWords tool and I'll use WordTracker at times. Those aren't the only tools, but they're the ones I tend to use the most. I'm not sure what you mean by placing the keywords on AdSense though. Do you mean bidding on AdWords keywords or are you talking about making money from AdSense?

[billbenson]

To me a landing page is just a page optimized for a particular key phrase as well as a sell page. In general, every page on a site should be optimized this way. There are exceptions and its not always practical. I don't see it as specific to Adwords or Adsense. If you have a natural SERPS page that ranks well you want the landing page to be optimized for what its placing well for and have a call to action of some sort.

[vangogh]

True, but some will refer to a landing page specifically as that one page hyper focused on one specific action. When someone lands on your site through search results or a link or any other way that page is technically a landing page, but usually the page won't be hyperfocused on a singular goal.

More likely there's a primary goal on the page along with a secondary goal or two.

Technically any page someone lands on is a landing page and in that sense every web page online may be a landing page. Still when you see people talking about landing pages they tend to mean the hyperfocused all in one sales page and more often than not the visitor is arriving from a search ad.