Ask Kalena

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Hi Kalena,

We’re having a debate here - what’s the difference between a (bad) doorway page and a (good) landing page? Is hosting an informative 1 page on a topic (eg:www.bluewidgets.com) and having that point to multiple pages on a related, parent site (e.: www.widgetes.com) frowned upon by Google, and does that technique fall under the landing or doorway page title?

Thanks for your help!

Cindy

An excellent question Cindy.

At their extremes, the differences between a spammy doorway page and a good landing page are usually pretty obvious to us humans. A “doorway” page has been designed specifically to appeal to search engines and rank well for a particular keyword phrase (or phrases) is typically stuffed with keywords, makes little real sense when you read it, and adds no real value to the user experience, whereas a “landing page” has been optimised for search rankings, but also aims to be useful and appealing to human visitors, and encourage them to take an appropriate call to action.

It can be much more difficult to determine the difference between a well crafted doorway page and an over-optimised landing page - not only for humans- but also for Google.

Google has to algorithmically determine the difference between these types of pages and uses a whole variety of factors to decide whether or not a particular page deserves a good ranking or a penalty. The types of factors taken into account could include - keyword density, duplicate content, inbound and outbound links, number of similar pages,

Ultimately the difference is probably a matter of intent - If a page has been created to be useful to visitors it will probably be treated by Google as a landing page, if the page has been over-optimised to a point that it becomes of little real benefit to users, then it will be treated by Google accordingly. This is one of the dangers associated with over-optimising a page or even an entire site. Even though it may have started out with a clear and useful purpose, over-optimisation could result in reduced rankings.

In the example you’ve provided I think the important word is “informative”. It is quite legitimate (and in fact encouraged) to link from a useful page on one site to relevant pages on another site.

Hope that helps.

Andy Henderson
WebConsulting Web Optimisation & Design

Popularity: 6%

Remember last month I mentioned I was writing a major article about how businesses use Twitter and I asked you all to take a couple of 10 second polls?

Well I’m happy to say the article has finally been published in the July edition of Website Magazine. If you’re not a subscriber to the hard copy OR online version, you can download this PDF version of the article: Conversational Marketing With Twitter.

Speaking of Website Magazine, did you know you can get a free subscription? That’s how I became interested in writing for them actually. I signed up for the 4 free issues and was both impressed with the quality of the articles and pleasantly surprised to see some familiar faces authoring them. So I got in touch with the Editor and suggested a story about Twitter.

Thanks to everyone for your help with the research and the great feedback on the article - I’ve had a surprising amount of feedback actually. My only regret is that editorial staff slashed my article by about 30 percent but I guess that’s to be expected with an offline magazine where space is at a premium. They also didn’t use the neat graphical polls I’d created using Twtpoll, but you can still catch those below:

1) Which of the following US companies do you follow on Twitter?

2) Have you ever communicated directly with a company via Twitter?

3) If you represent a business using Twitter, what is your/their *main* reason for doing so?

I’m hoping to publish the unedited version of the article with poll graphics on SiteProNews later this month so I’ll blog the URL when its live.

So did my article resonate with you? Is your business using Twitter in any of the ways mentioned in the article? I’d love your feedback in the comments below, thanks.

Popularity: 6%

Hi Kalena,

I have recently been working on SEO optimization where we promote our trainings to the individuals, we have implemented certain algorithms to optimize certain pages which is working but how can I make my contents more relevant so that I can reduce my bounce rate & increase conversion rate.

Best,
Chetan

Hi Chetam,

A great question, as it highlights that optimising your site to improve Traffic is really just a part of the overall optimisation process. Increasing traffic through SEO is a great way to start, but you also have to ensure that you make the most out of all the traffic that you do get.

It could be argued that the you can simply double your sales by doubling your traffic, and this may be achievable for low traffic volumes, but as your traffic increases the effort required to double it also increases. Once you are getting a reasonable volume of traffic to your site, it can very often be more efficient to work at improving your conversion rate than increasing your traffic.

Your sites Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors that purchase a product, or make an enquiry, or signup to your newsletter, or undertake whatever activity it is that you want them to do. The process of improving your conversions is called Conversion Optimisation (or Conversion Rate Optimisation), and there are many many strategies that you can use (see Conversion Rate Experts - Google Website Optimizer 101 – a quick-start guide to conversion rate optimization for a list of more than 100 different techniques).

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that look at a single page (the landing page) before leaving. A high bounce rate can be an indication of a relevancy issue as you have suggested, but it is not necessarily so. A high bounce rate could also indicate that the visitors to your site are not really interested in your products/services in the first place, and the keywords targeted, or the strategy you are using to drive traffic (PPC for example) is not working properly. You can make use of your site usage stats to take a closer look at the visitors that do convert - Do they predominantly come from a single source, or a certain group of keywords ? If so, focus your SEO strategies on these.

A high bounce rate could also be an indication of problems with the look, or functionality of your site. If your site is slow to load, or difficult to navigate - if your product/ service offerings are not clear, or your call to actions are not obvious or enticing enough, your bounce rates are likely to be high, and your conversion rates low.

Try some usability testing - sit someone down at your site and watch over their shoulder while they use it. Very often they will use your site quite differently to how you expect them to. On the basis of this usability testing compile a list of changes that could be made to your site, that you believe will improve the user experience, and make it clearer and easier for visitors to get to your call to actions.

When implementing changes to your site make sure that you test and monitor the results. If a particular change (or batch of changes) decreases your bounce rate and improves your conversion rate it is probably a good thing. There are tools available such as Google’s (Free) Website Optimizer that can help you with testing and monitoring the impact of changes to your site.

Have Fun with Conversion Optimisation - it can have dramatic impact on the effectiveness of your website.

Andy Henderson
WebConsulting - Website Optimisation Services

Popularity: 7%

Hi Kalena,

I am planning to build a website completely in Flex. What type of SEO can be done on it? Is it crawlable?

Shailendra Sial.

Dear Shailendra

Building a Flex (Flash) based website has always been the bone of contention between website designers and SEO professionals. While website designers argue that it provides great interactivity and a chance to explore the boundaries of creativity (which is quite true), SEO professionals contend that it is not search engine friendly. This scenario was greatly altered when Adobe announced that it is working with Google and Yahoo to enhance indexing of Flash file formats (SWF). This information was echoed in a post made on Google Webmaster Central Blog; a major shift in how search engine treated Flash based websites.

But the picture is not as ‘rosy’ as it may seem. While search engine spiders, especially Googlebot, are capable of indexing flash (SWF) files, it is far from perfect. Jill Whalen made a perfect case out of it – Are The Search Engines Really Indexing Flash?

So “Is it crawlable?” – I would have to say both Yes and No for an answer. It would depend on how you would place content within Flash (SWF) files. Anything that is static will be indexed by search engines whereas anything that is fetched dynamically will not be indexed.

Search engine spiders are interested in data that is present on the webpage and do not care much about the surrounding markup. In case of Flex, the primary source of content is XML (dynamic content) and therefore ‘may’ not be indexed. The common workaround to this issue is XSLT, which can be used to transform XML data into various formats like HTML that can be readily indexed by crawlers. This is how far I can take you with my technical ‘know how’. I would recommend you read Flash & Search Engines : Indexed in a Flash, a mega post that deals with all aspects related to Flash websites.

Once you have digested all the information provide above, I am sure you would have a fair bit of idea on where your website would stand from an SEO perspective. Personally, I would recommend that you use Flash in moderation; search engine spiders are still best at crawling (X)HTML architecture. It would ensure that you website has enough ‘food’ for crawlers. For parts of website built in Flash, I would recommend you refer to this detailed post on beu blog, to make it as search engine friendly as possible.

Good luck!

Saurav.

Popularity: 9%

Dear Kalena…

You’ve helped us out with a couple of problems over the years ~ thanks again. Don’t have a problem this time but I do want to get your opinion/guidance so I can maybe AVOID a problem.

We handle over 5,000 products, and we want to create a page for each product using an automated page generator. Same as what thousands of other people do. Nothing fancy and no SEO tricks. Just a brief description of the item, price & how to order.

I’ll be using a template, of course, and about 75% of the words (excluding shared borders) will be common to all pages. The other 25% of words on a given page will be unique to the product/page in question.

I may be overly cautious, but I’ve learned the hard way that what seems like a good idea or what the rest of the herd is doing might not be acceptable to the SE’s, especially if not executed properly. We have a fairly well-performing website and the stakes get higher as we grow. So, any tips on what to do / not do when creating these individual product page would be appreciated.

Thanks
Rick

Dear Rick,

Sometimes it’s possible to reduce duplicate content by placing that content in a dedicated section of your website and then linking to it where necessary (this can apply to things like shipping/handling, product guarantees, returns policies and terms & conditions… which some store owners will try and display on every page but could quit easily be put elsewhere).

Another way to make the search engines focus on the unique content is by using emphasis tags (such as H1, H2, bold, italics etc.) and use them sparingly (or don’t use them at all) in your page header, footer and other duplicate parts of the page. This will help the spiders isolate your unique page-specific content as well as drawing your readers attention to the most important parts of the page.

You could also try and setup a feature that allows users to add reviews or feedback on each of the products. This user-generated content would become yet another source of additional unique content for each page (and what’s better is you didn’t have to write it yourself).

Hope this helps!

Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Brisbane

Popularity: 8%