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Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?
Posted by: Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Manager, HP.com

I recently read an article in Website Magazine entitled Landing Pages: SEO vs SEM, written by Aaron Kupferberg (it was on page 12 of the February edition for those of you who enjoy reading hard copy - as I do - once in a while). It was an interesting perspective and while I don't disagree - especially with the example Arron provided - I do want to provide my perspective on this particular topic.

First, I have a pet peeve about referring to "Pay-Per-Click" or "Sponsored" search marketing as SEM because I consider SEO to be a form or search engine marketing and hence falls under the umbrella of SEM.  That aside let's get into the different perspectives on landing pages.

I'll start with the example given by Aaron which was Zappos. He differentiated landing pages for SEO and PPC because of the business Zappos is in and the primary products and services  they're known for delivering. (I'm personally a big fan of Zappos so very familiar with their site!) I believe Aaron's point was that for the search term "shoes" Zappos' home page naturally comes up high (#2 for me) in the list of organic results because of their popularity for on-line shoe shopping. And since the home page isn't entirely focused on shoes now that they've expanded to offer clothing, bags, watches and accessories it makes sense to provide a very targeted "shoes" page in the sponsored results.

However, what about all those search terms for which Zappos home page does not dominate top listings in organic? For example watches. Doesn't it then make sense for Zappos to build a really well optimized page for watches that also serves as the landing page for not only sponsored listings but on-site search as well?

This is where I think you have to think about search as a holistic experience - considering sponsored, organic and on-site experiences together. By developing these pages that serve all these search avenues you save money and time on development and maintenance of these pages and you are much less likely to create a confusing experience for searchers who may enter your site from paid search one day and natural or on-site search - using the same or similar keywords - the next. You can also learn from the conversion and actions of all visitors and then break it down by search pillar to see how conversion rates and actions compare.

If companies started to look at organic search the way they look at paid (Specifically around developing new pages to address certain keywords), I think they'd realize there are gaps that need to be addressed for both organic and on-site searches as well.


Posted 02-14-2008 3:46 PM by BlogArchive
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Tpangakis wrote Re: Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?
on 02-24-2008 2:45 PM
"This is where I think you have to think about search as a holistic experience - considering sponsored, organic and on-site experiences together. " Yes, I agree. I was looking that HP.COM home page and wondered by there weren't more options under the Resources menu on the left side. What about adding pages that are the destinations for frequently search keywords like Warranty, Customer Self Repair, and Specs? Warranty Frequently Asked Questions (http://h40059.www4.hp.com/warranty/information/faq.php) Customer Self Repair (http://h18029.www1.hp.com/support/selfrepair/) Product Bulletin - QuickSpecs (http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/ProductBulletin.html) Tara
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Tanya Rietze wrote Re: Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?
on 02-25-2008 2:14 PM
Thanks for sending this. So this is the gist from that blog post by Google: "How we help users and webmasters with duplicate content We've designed algorithms to help prevent duplicate content from negatively affecting webmasters and the user experience. 1. When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster. 2. We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results. 3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL. Consolidating properties from duplicates into one representative URL often provides users with more accurate search results. The key is the first statement "When we detect duplicate content...". While Google has done a good job of this on their own it wouldn't hurt for them to open up the communications with webmasters because we could tell them up front about duplicates. The issue arises when Google does not detect the duplicate content and still indexes multiple URLs for one page which still happens quite frequently. My suggestion is that Google offer a similar tool for Webmasters as Yahoo! Site Explorer so we can help them reduce duplicate content we know exists and of course consolidate our link popularity by doing so. Great comment!
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seopractices wrote Re: Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?
on 03-24-2008 7:20 PM
Hi Tanya, I read the article, very interesting. I believe that you have much control over your paid listings than organic listings, then that's why the author of the article writes about organic landing pages as being highly optimized, keyword rich. On the contrary for Paid traffic landing pages you use certain type of keywords, the ones that call to action like: buy, order, the product name, a combination of them, etc. So this paid traffic landing pages have different aspects that you want to include, so the buyer takes action. You want to include on this type of landing pages: -Attractive titles -Signs of trust -Testimonials -Outstanding call to action buttons -High quality images of the product See the difference is that in organic search you have less control, so you don't really know what type of customer is going to land on your site. It can be visitors looking just for information, people that want to buy but not ready yet, people ready to buy, etc. So this organic landing page is more general to be able to target a more general audience, and depending on the type of customer you drive them to different type of pages on your site.
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Jeff Paul Scam wrote re: Landing Pages - SEO vs SEM?
on 03-05-2009 7:03 AM

Hi, I found your post really interesting, my friend and I run a small internet marketing business at home. We are roommates, so after our day job, we spend an hour on research and work.

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