Death Of Squeeze Pages As They Are Known,.google Slapped Em Dead
For years now, the squeeze page has practically been the lingua franca of the online marketing world. Whether youre in real estate (and actually, the real estate industry in particular has leaned particularly heavily on squeeze pages), banking, e-commerce or anything else, the conventional wisdom has been to target tightly focused groups of consumers through these web pages/marketing tools.
These pages do OK at helping marketers identify which keywords or keyword phrases do well in terms of attracting targeted traffic and at least if theyre well designed, at gathering email addresses or other contact information from these visitors. However, there are much better methods of doing keyword research than creating a separate squeeze page for each of your keywords. Additionally, building and maintaining these pages represents an investment of time and money which isnt likely to produce a worthwhile return.
The squeeze page is dead it just doesnt know it yet and neither do the marketers who still use this direct marketing-style methodology in their list building efforts. I know theres probably at least a few of you out there reading this who still use them and are wondering what exactly is wrong with squeeze pages.
As it happens, the answer is plenty. Theyre unappealing to consumers and increasingly, theyre seen as undesirable pieces of virtual property by the search engines as well. When youre trying to market your business with a tool that turns off both your target market and the search engines, its clear that the time has come to abandon ship. Ill explain in more detail below.
Theyre Completely Unappealing To Readers
Youve seen a squeeze page before and chances are youve hit the back button on your browser almost immediately. These pages almost universally feature incredibly unattractive cookie cutter designs and copy which is generally nothing but sensational hype. That alone is enough to turn off most readers, not to mention that squeeze pages seem all too often to be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Put simply, they dont look professional by any stretch of the imagination but they do look professional enough to fool many businesspeople who are new to the medium of the web into using them at least for a while.
Think of it this way if you got a flyer in the mail that looked like one of these pages, would you be in a hurry to contact the marketer to sign up for their mailing list, let alone actually do business with them? Probably not.
As a general rule, if it looks too awful to be true, its just what it looks like and squeeze pages are a prime example of this. They lack any kind of credibility with your prospective customers, especially when youre in the real estate business. These pages make you look like the online equivalent of a shady used car salesman, not the kind of person that people want to do a real estate deal with. There are other things about squeeze pages that turn off your potential customers, but since theres some crossover with this and the SEO shortcomings of the format, well get back to that a little later on.
Google Slaps Squeeze Pages
Its true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isnt that relevant to many, if any actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.
Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (classic squeeze pages, after all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales latter in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.
Squeeze Pages Can Sink Your Main Site
Lets get back to that subtitle about Google slapping squeeze pages, because this is one of the most important points Id like to make here today. If your squeeze pages either link to or are part of your main site, theyre more than likely causing a slump in your main sites search engine ranking, making you less visible to your market online. In other words, the exact opposite of what youd hoped to accomplish. If these pages link to your site, you can be penalized for these links from unpopular sites in what Google considers to be an iffy online neighborhood and what are the three most important things in real estate? Exactly.
Another way that squeeze pages can drag down your online presence is through having a large percentage of duplicate content. Many businesses throw up dozens of squeeze pages which are basically identical other than the targeted keywords for that particular page. Even if you make an effort to rewrite the content on these pages, theres only so much you can do without putting a disproportionate amount of time or money into the effort.
So if squeeze pages are out, what are real estate professionals to do in terms of online marketing? Theres plenty of options, all of which are better choices than building a series of squeeze pages. I wont go into them all here, but as always on the web, its all about good content which is geared towards readers first and search engines second when your market sees you as credible and reputable, theyll beat a path to your door and happily sign up for your email list. And where the market goes, the search engines will follow; but no ones flocking to squeeze pages.
These pages do OK at helping marketers identify which keywords or keyword phrases do well in terms of attracting targeted traffic and at least if theyre well designed, at gathering email addresses or other contact information from these visitors. However, there are much better methods of doing keyword research than creating a separate squeeze page for each of your keywords. Additionally, building and maintaining these pages represents an investment of time and money which isnt likely to produce a worthwhile return.
The squeeze page is dead it just doesnt know it yet and neither do the marketers who still use this direct marketing-style methodology in their list building efforts. I know theres probably at least a few of you out there reading this who still use them and are wondering what exactly is wrong with squeeze pages.
As it happens, the answer is plenty. Theyre unappealing to consumers and increasingly, theyre seen as undesirable pieces of virtual property by the search engines as well. When youre trying to market your business with a tool that turns off both your target market and the search engines, its clear that the time has come to abandon ship. Ill explain in more detail below.
Theyre Completely Unappealing To Readers
Youve seen a squeeze page before and chances are youve hit the back button on your browser almost immediately. These pages almost universally feature incredibly unattractive cookie cutter designs and copy which is generally nothing but sensational hype. That alone is enough to turn off most readers, not to mention that squeeze pages seem all too often to be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Put simply, they dont look professional by any stretch of the imagination but they do look professional enough to fool many businesspeople who are new to the medium of the web into using them at least for a while.
Think of it this way if you got a flyer in the mail that looked like one of these pages, would you be in a hurry to contact the marketer to sign up for their mailing list, let alone actually do business with them? Probably not.
As a general rule, if it looks too awful to be true, its just what it looks like and squeeze pages are a prime example of this. They lack any kind of credibility with your prospective customers, especially when youre in the real estate business. These pages make you look like the online equivalent of a shady used car salesman, not the kind of person that people want to do a real estate deal with. There are other things about squeeze pages that turn off your potential customers, but since theres some crossover with this and the SEO shortcomings of the format, well get back to that a little later on.
Google Slaps Squeeze Pages
Its true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isnt that relevant to many, if any actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.
Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (classic squeeze pages, after all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales latter in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.
Squeeze Pages Can Sink Your Main Site
Lets get back to that subtitle about Google slapping squeeze pages, because this is one of the most important points Id like to make here today. If your squeeze pages either link to or are part of your main site, theyre more than likely causing a slump in your main sites search engine ranking, making you less visible to your market online. In other words, the exact opposite of what youd hoped to accomplish. If these pages link to your site, you can be penalized for these links from unpopular sites in what Google considers to be an iffy online neighborhood and what are the three most important things in real estate? Exactly.
Another way that squeeze pages can drag down your online presence is through having a large percentage of duplicate content. Many businesses throw up dozens of squeeze pages which are basically identical other than the targeted keywords for that particular page. Even if you make an effort to rewrite the content on these pages, theres only so much you can do without putting a disproportionate amount of time or money into the effort.
So if squeeze pages are out, what are real estate professionals to do in terms of online marketing? Theres plenty of options, all of which are better choices than building a series of squeeze pages. I wont go into them all here, but as always on the web, its all about good content which is geared towards readers first and search engines second when your market sees you as credible and reputable, theyll beat a path to your door and happily sign up for your email list. And where the market goes, the search engines will follow; but no ones flocking to squeeze pages.
Source...