Websites vs. Landing Pages: Unraveling the Confusion & Boosting Your SEO
Are you unsure about the difference between web pages, websites, and landing pages? Or do you wonder if having a website is even necessary in 2024?
In this episode, Jules White, Website and SEO Consultant clears up the confusion surrounding these terms and explains why understanding the distinction is crucial for your SEO strategy. Learn how having a well-structured website with essential pages like a homepage, about page, and contact page can boost your credibility and improve your website's visibility in search engine results.
Discover actionable tips on using webpages strategically, incorporating trust signals, and ensuring your sales pages are easily accessible. Whether you're just starting or have an established online presence, this episode will provide valuable insights to enhance your website's SEO and drive more traffic to your business.
Tune in to learn:
- Clear definitions of web pages, websites, and landing pages
- How Google's search engine works and the importance of trust signals
- Practical tips for optimising your website and landing pages
Don't miss this opportunity to unravel the confusion and unlock the full potential of your online presence!
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AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS
Introduction: The Website Dilemma
So I was talking to somebody this week in a networking party about the fact that, so we were talking about websites, as often comes up when I'm talking to people, and she said she hadn't got a website. website. But then when we looked at things, when we talked a bit further, she said that she just had landing pages.
And this happens quite a lot that I talk to people quite a lot and they will say that they haven't got websites or they, they, then their website's neglected, but they pay attention to their landing pages. So I wanted to, and I've seen this a few times recently as well. where I've seen, I see so many YouTube videos of you don't need a website and I'll come back to that in a minute, realistically about that.
But it's something that does seem to be a lot of, there's a lot of conversation around that at the moment.
Understanding Web Pages and Websites
So I want to start off by talking about What web pages are, what a website is, and what webpage are, and what a landing page is essentially. So web, anything, any pages on the on the internet are webpage.
So essentially what they are is a page. In a browser window that displays information and that information might be styled. So it would be styled. So it looks a certain way. It will have certain functionality as well. So it behaves in a certain way and it will contain media like images, text, sound, video.
And if you think of this like the. individual departments in a department store. So if you've got a department store, that's like the overall store, but within that you'd have individual departments. Hi Karen. And so think of that as web pages. So whether you call that A webpage, a website, a landing page, a sales page, an opt-in page, a checkout page, a blog page, a podcast page, or even a board, as my dad calls webpages,
So he'll say, I went on Sainsbury's board this morning and it was really slow. So we know what he means. Or you? No, if you're calling them landing pages. Essentially, they are all just pages on the web and a website is a collection of pages and they're all under the same address. So think of that as the whole department store.
You have that department store in a specific address. That's your domain. That's the website.
Google's Role in Website Visibility
is the website and everything is under one address and then within that you have the individual web pages which are the departments in that department store and then search engines like google are like the map that people can then find that store and we can tell google with the way that we lay things out what we're selling and the individual departments within and i think it's good to understand the basics about how Google does that.
So essentially what happens is Google's little robots go out and crawl the internet. Google's job is to work out when people are typing things into the search, Google's job is to work out out of all of those web pages that are out there, which one delivers the best result for that person. So that's a mammoth job to do.
And the way that Google does that is Google's little robots go out and they crawl the whole and they work out what information is on those pages. And how that relates to what people are actually searching for and whether that is trustworthy, authoritative, entertaining, and like relevant as well. So that's essentially how it works in terms of how Google then structures, the, the library.
So what then Google does once it's, once it's crawled, once the bots have crawled through all those internet pages, it then places it into its index. And that's like a big library. So Google knows where your web pages fit into that library essentially. And then it can pull, pull those out when somebody is searching for that particular term.
So I was thinking, Oh, maybe it's just me. Maybe I need to update the way that I talk about websites and webpages and landing pages and talk about things differently. Lots of people are not being, not understanding that difference between them and people are sort of starting more to talk about landing pages.
Keyword Research Insights
So I thought, well, I'll do a little keyword reset because that's always a good way to start with, with my clients when I'm working with them. We'll always, do some keyword research. That's like the fundamentals in terms of getting your website working for your business and getting your SEO in order.
So I did a little keyword research around. I looked for how to create a webpage and then how to create a landing page. Or I think I actually started off just putting in webpage and landing page. And then that's all took me down this route. So how to create, create a webpage has 22, 000 searches a month.
How to create a landing page is 170, so there's definitely some difference there. A lot of people are still searching for how to create a web page. And then I looked and actually how to create a website is also being treated along that. So it's got around the same amount of searches per month, which is usually an indication that Google is treating that as the same search term.
So there are a lot more people searching for how to create a website versus how to create a landing page. But then I did a search around what is a landing page versus what is a web page. There are 6. 6 thousand people searching each month for what is a landing page and 480 people a month searching for what is a web page.
So it's, you know, interesting. I didn't search for what is a website, but actually that would be interesting as well to look at that. But it just shows that people are confused about this as well, I think. And a lot of people will say that. They'll say That they don't know. No. Do I need landing pages or do I need a website or web pages or whatever?
And a lot of my clients will treat them as different things as well.
The Importance of using a Single Domain
So they'll have a website, a basic, often a basic website that they've not maybe done too much with. It might look beautiful, but it's not necessarily performing as they want it to. And there's so much untapped potential there. where they're then also using landing pages for their sales pages, but they've maybe got them on a different domain.
So that can quite often happen with like ClickFunnels and FGFunnels and FEA Create any, anything where you're using an all in one builder, it can often encourage you. And the same even with, uh, actually Kajabi is slightly different from the way that they set it up. They do tend to keep it all on one domain, but just with, with those kinds of builders, they often encou Almost encourage you to use a subdomain for your sales pages so you end up with rather than it being like thewebsitesuccesshub.com Google analytics what sort of like my google analytics course page it would be GA or googleanalytics.thewebsite successhub.Com. So you'd use a subdomain essentially. I'm getting a bit technical here really. So it is where you're then basically not keeping your, all of your traffic within that one.
address. So within that, within that, it's almost like having one of your department store departments in a building down the street and nobody knows that it's there except for the people who just happen to stumble across it. And a lot of the time on our landing pages and on our sales pages we have some really valuable information on there.
We have a lot, we put a lot of effort into those pages around answering questions and objections and really thinking about. The problem that we're solving. And if they're on another domain, that's a massively wasted opportunity for helping Google to understand that your business relates to this particular thing, and then building that with, and it's a two way street as well.
So not only then having some supporting articles on your website that then shows Google that this sales page, they know what they're talking about. Cause they're also talking about a similar topic over here, or they're talking about something related over here, but also the other way around as well. So that sales page in that.
important information that's on that sales page. Also, they'll then helping to support the rest of your website and raising your authority of your, the rest of your website. So it's something that often, as I say, often comes up with clients where they're treating them as separate things and really missing out on those SEO opportunities there.
So.
SEO and Trust Signals
I, the other thing as well is if you have it on a separate domain, then you're missing out on some of the key, Google has certain things that it looks for, which are trust signals. And there are certain pages on a web site, certain web pages on a website that people, that Google looks for, to understand that you're a legitimate business and that you are to be trusted.
And if you haven't got those there, if your sales pages are just standalone individual pages, then that is also then harming your SEO because Google is less likely to show those sales pages up. If they're just individual pages without these sort of trust pages in place. So the pages that Google looks for is a homepage and about page and a contact page.
Those are ones that even if you've got sort of the basic set up on those pages that can then help your support yourselves pages and help them to actually grow your business. Rank better on Google. So I would, and then there's things like your privacy policy, your terms and conditions as well, that those pages that Google wouldn't necessarily be putting it in its index and showing up on search results.
But still, if those pages are there, it all helps Google to understand that you are a trustworthy site and that it should be sending its customers who are the people that are doing the searching helps, you know, that Google should send its customers to you, basically. So then.
User Experience and Navigation
The other thing with the sales page is sometimes if you, if you, hi Scylla, if you have sales pages and we would often not have navigation on sales pages because we want to keep people on that page.
We want them to take one particular action. But if we don't have any way for people to actually find those sales pages as well, then. That can also harm, you know, harm our conversions and help and prevent us from making some sales, really. I, one of my, um, somebody I was talking to the other day, there was a course that I would recommend, would have recommended to her.
But because the website that it's on, the person who's, who I bought this course from doesn't have any, Easy links on their website to take them to take you to this course. And it's just a short course. So it's one that, you know, it's the kind of thing where it's, it's a no brainer course. It's a low ticket sort of thing.
But because there wasn't. that navigation there, I couldn't then send that person to that page and say, oh, this is, this is the course you need for that thing we were just talking about. And I still, I still want to do that. But essentially all it's done is made, it's just given me another job to do of actually messaging that person and saying, oh, is there the link to this page?
And I Googled it to see if I could find it on Google. And I still couldn't find it. And I, it's, it's just that extra step. If you've got to put anything else in, in people's way to make it harder. For them to then share your content, it's something that just having that in your navigation menu can make a massive difference, really.
So I guess that's all part of just thinking about the whole user experience of it being easy for people to actually find the stuff that you're selling and recommend you as well as actually Google being able to find it as well. So having your top level navigation. where at least you're linking to your sales pages from your main pages from your home page is a bit of a no brainer really because otherwise if you're making it harder for people to find your content then obviously it's then also going to be harder for google to find your content but most importantly first and foremost everything that we're doing is about the people that we're trying to help and and trying to sell our sell our stuff to basically so I Also, the YouTube videos.
Debunking the 'No Website Needed' Myth
So I've seen quite a few YouTube videos. Hi, Karen where people, it's these things of why you don't need a website in 2024. I was watching one the other day and it made me laugh because they, We're essentially going into all the reasons. So they were talking about email marketing and they were building out an email funnel.
And I think, I can't even remember, I think they had like an opt in page or something like that as well. And what they were essentially doing was building it out. I can't remember which platform it was. It might've been like MemberVault or Teachable or something like that, where you, you have the option of building a landing page within the platform.
So they're saying why you don't need a website in 2024. And then explaining how you build a landing page, which is then just a web page. So it's kind of like, okay, you're saying that we don't need a website, but all we're, all we're essentially doing is just creating landing pages that then don't have that authority and trust.
Whereas actually, if we just kept created a couple of before we got to that point, create a couple of pages with a homepage, the about page, Okay. A contact page is just something very basic, then that can help to lift your whole web, all of your web pages, whether you call them individual web pages or think of them as a website or not, it can massively help with that really as well.
Conclusion and Next Steps
So I would love to know what you think. Do you think of your website and your sales pages or your landing pages? separately? Do you think of them as different things, as individual elements out there? Do you have them all under one domain or do you have separate subdomains? And if you're, if you're, if you struggle with this and you just don't know what's the best way to do it, then Book a Power Hour and we can have a chat and we can work out how to make the most of whatever you call them, make the most of the pages that you have out there on the internet.
So I hope this has been helpful and . I'll see you soon. Bye.
