I have created four hypothetical landing pages for different types of businesses in the service industry - one for a taxi firm and two for emergency plumbers or electricians interchangeably and a painter decorator/builder. Some businesses are well suited for search engine optimisation while some are better suited too - and get great results from - paid advertising. In this blog I explore what works best for different businesses and why.
If you don’t have, or are planning on getting a new website and work in the service industry it is worth considering your end user. Do they want loads of information on what service level they might be getting, or do they just want a simple page with a phone number simple content and a few reviews? This blog explores various single page websites for different industries. These websites are cheap, easy to maintain and are great because they catch the users eye. Everything there is in front of your user. Landing pages are also the some of the easiest websites to build and sometimes the best choice.
Optimising Your Phone Number For Conversion
First our taxi firm. People looking for taxis literally just want the phone number in their area. I once ran a pay per click campaign for a taxi firm which managed in the first month a 93% conversion rate between people clicking on their advert and phoning the business. When you phone a taxi firm you are unlikely to just make an enquiry so for businesses like taxis paid advertising will nearly always be very profitable. Further to this they have a great quality score for one or two keywords which is all you need - saving you money on your Google Adwords campaigns.
When building a landing page it is good to have a clear idea of what you want from the outset. Too many websites have phone numbers hidden away on a contact page then wonder why they aren’t getting any phone calls for their services. A phone number should be the same size as the site logo and on the opposite side of the page. Firstly site logos are almost exclusively on the top left or top right side of the website so that is where we expect to find them. The standard landing page layout is something like this:
So I have made a very basic hypothetical layout that a taxi firm may use. You basic taxi firm doesn’t need a shining multi page website. Infact this will take away from their core business of people searching for “taxi’s in (location)”.
What they do need is a prominent phone number with a call to action. The fact that the site title, headers and the majority of the content will be taxi related means that the site will have a great quality score for relevance from the outset. You are giving the user what they want so they are unlikely the bounce from your page and after a few weeks you are likely to find that Google Adwords is giving you loads of cheap hits with great conversion rates.
The positioning of the phone number and the logo are interchangeable but it is advisable to have a call to action eg the cheesy - “don’t delay call today” which is slightly smaller than the number itself. Also it’s best to keep the phone number the same size as the logo. If you are working in the service industry and just want to generate phone calls you want the number to be just as prominent as your logo.
Applying Great PPC Practice To A More Complex Landing Page
Optimising a website to have a great quality score is very different from search engine optimisation. While SEO is about having great big well indexed websites, Google Adwords is generally looking for an ultra relevant page which is well laid out to give the user what they want fast. This means you want a lot of content on the landing page which hits your target keyword - what the end user is looking for.
We have established your eyes are drawn to the top left and right hand corners of the page. Google’s algorithm is aware of this and seems to give added weight to text higher up your page. On a more content driven website this can be used to your advantage.
Lets take a look at a hypothetical emergency plumbing company. Again they have a very prominent phone number. A plumber needs more content to tell the end user what they do. This allows them to increase the viability of them appearing on search engines non paid (organic) results.
A simple way of making more content prominent is by giving your site a columned design - like the figure above. This allows for a good relevancy score ac cross multiple keywords while still focusing on being an emergency plumber and keeping your focus keyword relevant.
Usually people skim read on websites which is why headings are so vital. Google uses your header tags to assess what keywords you are likely to be targeting in a similar way to how the meta keyword tags used to work. You can target yourself to appear well for the organic (non paid search) with a couple of carefully selected keywords.
The Tabbed Layout - SEO and PPC On A Landing Page
Let’s say our hypothetical emergency plumber is planning a huge campaign with thousands of keywords, but doesn’t want to create loads of individual landing pages for what are all essentially plumbing services.
A tabbed layout is great for this and if you are or have a competent web designer or web marketing consultant they can ensure that depending on what search term is given the end user will arrive with the right tab open.
The advantage of this is that emergency plumbing is quite a competitive search term so you have an ultra targeted landing page. This now has enough content on it to be good for SEO and even better all the content is visible as the user opens the page so search engines will love this page.
The keyword relevancy will be improved because all the keywords and headings can be emergency plumbing related. When people have a burst pipe the phone number and knowing you will deal with the emergency should be enough to create a job. You can also include images of your work in the content which improves the SEO.
If SEO is what PlumbCO is aiming for then a good link building strategy would be necessary. Because this landing page is targeted to get people to phone the business they should find their conversion rate of web views to paying customers being high.
PAINTco The Sliding Layout
Finally lets explore how a painter decorator or even a builder looking to have a large pay per click campaign might approach a landing page. Sliders are increasingly being used to show off work portfolios:
Sliders allow interactivity. If you intending to run a pay per click campaign as a painter decorator a slider allows for more multi media insertions in a small space on your landing page and often have huge images to catch your eye. You can show off your portfolio and the services you offer while staying on your landing page.
One thing to remember is continuity will keep people scrolling through your portfolio. You can assign one page of the slider to one keyword you target and then you have a landing page within a landing page (inception style). This is great for running pay per click campaigns and getting work while building a website around it.
When you get your pay per click working then monitor your site’s quality scores and adjust your keywords for what you are getting the best results from.
If you are in the service industry these are just four examples of businesses not so different to your own each use landing pages to make pay per click a much more profitable endeavour. Consider which if any model might work best for you and then give it a go. Landing pages are very cheap to make.
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