Why Google May be Ignoring your Rapid Conversion Landing Pages
Keyword rankings and search optimization result from deliberate website architecture
The simple website architecture requirement that virtually guarantees your offer will be found and indexed highly by Google
I’ve always admired the star football running back who, when asked about his success, gives credit to the linemen.
“They open up a hole, and I simply run through it,” he explains modestly. “Without the other members of the team, running backs alone are not very effective.”
That’s how it is with website landing pages. One kind isn’t enough. Website attraction architecture requires several different page templates that must work together to achieve their goals.
A Rapid Conversion Landing Page (a.k.a. “name squeeze” page) is essential to building a database of free email newsletter subscribers.
The premise is simple. Create a valuable free report, white paper, or downloadable software application and offer it free-of-charge with a simple sales letter. We call it a Rapid Conversion Landing Page because it’s designed to rapidly convert the reader to a free email newsletter subscriber.
After all, the RCLP offers a low-risk, low-friction proposition: It essentially says, “I’ve got a nice gift for you. It’s easy and free. Simply give me your email address, and in return, I’ll give you a valuable piece of downloadable information. And if you want to get off my email subscriber list at any time, I’ll make that easy, too.”
The offer is certainly attractive — “free” is a price that meets with very little resistance. The challenge, as with marketing any product, is getting the word out to your intended audience.
Write a well-crafted Rapid Conversion Landing Page, pepper it liberally with keyword phrases that you know are popular search terms with your target market, add an email capture box, turn the whole message into HTML, and upload it to your web server.
Presto: You’ve got a Rapid Conversion Landing Page that should be easy for Google to find, and irresistible to your target audience. Collecting hundreds of email addresses should be automatic now, right?
Well, not so fast.
Because eventually the Google crawlers are going to find your nifty little RCLP, read it, and ignore it.
Ignore it? Why?
Because without a supporting cast of incoming hypertext links, Google doesn’t consider your RCLP to be of much importance.
A Rapid Conversion Landing Page without article pages is virtually worthless. It requires dozens of article pages, all pointing to it using hyperlinks that include the name of the free report or download.
That’s because Google inherently does not value a single page, no matter how well it’s optimized for search. This is particularly true when the purpose of the page is to extract someone’s email address.
Google wants the RCLP to have supporting pages, like the linemen on the football team. These are internal links from article pages containing well-written content on a topic similar to the Rapid Conversion Landing Page, that reference your free download.
Google is effectively saying, “If you don’t think this offer of a free download is important enough to link to, then we don’t think it’s important enough to rank highly.”
As a periodical or reference website publisher, you can publish innumerable article pages. Legacy publishers have a wealth of content that can be repurposed as article pages that point to a RCLP.
The final piece in this marketing effort is getting other publishers to link to your RCLP. When Google determines that your offer of a free download is recommended by lots of website colleagues and friendly competitors — as demonstrated by incoming hypertext links from these external websites — your Google rank is virtually certain to soar.
Offering free premium downloadable content on a Rapid Conversion Landing Page — one element of a properly architected website — is a win/win for all concerned: Google, the user, your publishing colleagues, and you.
It’s also the best circ-building strategy ever devised.
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