I’ve been working on a few other projects lately and in the process needed to create dynamic landing pages based on what a user searched for. For those that don’t know a landing page is:
The specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking an advertisement. Often, this page is optimized for a specific keyword term or phrase.
I liked the idea of making a page look exactly like what the user searched for. If I searched for “rusty blue widgets” and the page I arrive at has “RUSTY BLUE WIDGETS” I think “Wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for!” and I’m much more likely to scroll down and read more. I decided to apply this same concept to my programming forum. I already have about 200,000 pages listed in google, and around 80% of my traffic is organic. So making every page a “landing page” seemed like a good idea.
I replaced my welcome message near the top of each page with the parsed out keywords from the search engine referrer. If a user searches for “C++ Sleep” and arrives at my site, they will see “C++ Sleep” in the welcome box and “Register for free and post your C++ Sleep Questions”. You can see an example of this by searching for C++ Sleep on google and clicking the first result.
Since implementing this change, I have seen an almost 80% increase in the number of registrations and my depth of session has increased by over 50%. I’ve also seen a slight bump in CTR and eCPM from AdSense.
I would highly suggest implementing some sort of landing page script if a lot of your traffic is organic. I adapted the code from here.
UPDATE: Michael from RC Nitro Talk put together a tutorial to create landing pages for your vBulletin forum. Thanks Michael!
by Chris Kenworthy @ Ackfoo.com
Awesome post Chris - you rock!
Thanks!
I’ll check it out now.
It’d be even more awesome if I could get this to work for vBulletin
Nothing I am trying is working.
Yeah I really should figure this one out, but great idea!
That’s really impressing. Thanks for sharing something so important
That is one awesome tip.
I’ve seen people doing this on blogs and it really does attract your attention.
Thanks again.
Chris,
You mind posting how you managed to get this to work with vBulletin?
Michael,
I actually use IPB, and I did it in straight PHP then included that in my template. I wish I had some more info for you vB usuers
Updated with tutorial for vBulletin. Thanks Michael!
Chris,
Thanks again for all your help!
-Michael
Very cool! I just added this to Shaun’s to do list… I will report back with results!
Laura
Okay, so we have been brainstorming on this a bit, and we are going to try and build on it some. I will post more when I have more details as he is just now starting to build the framework for it, but it should be very cool.
When I sent him your link he got all excited about what he could do with it to improve conversions and session times. I am looking forward to seeing some great changes! Thank you for sharing the insight.
Laura
[…] A few weeks ago I posted at ForumTrends about creating landing pages for your forums. Since then, I’ve been doing some more experimenting to increase my member conversion and AdSense CTR (click-thru-rate). It’s not big surprise, but I found that having large box with a lot of white space and 18+ size font inviting the user to register results in a significant increase in conversion rate. I’ve also seen a slight bump in CTR for my 336×280 AdSense block next to the text. […]
Thank you so much! I have recently noticed a drop in new registrations in spite of my new first page SERPS for more competitive terms.
So after I stumbled upon Lee’s new and VERY SEXY blog… I mean great job Forrest! I would love to work with you on my forum.
I just applied this landing page trick using the tutorial on DreamInCode. For anyone who is having problems making it work, I hope you didn’t make the same mistake as I did and try to call the term variable by putting $terms in the welcome header. You have to call it using {5}.
Many thanks for this useful mod! I’ll update you on how it improves my registrations.
Interesting stuff, Lee