Clothing The Naked Squeeze Page

By Author: Derek Vanderpool
Total Articles: 7
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One of the important (and fairly recent) changes to squeeze page methodology is how Google ranks them. Google's search algorithm sorts by relevance and a few other factors, and optimizing web pages for Google's search engine is a fairly large business.

Search engine optimization tries its level best to make a page seem like something "likely" to have a high relevance to the key words being optimized for. This leads to web pages that read like pure, utter drivel when carried to extremes, where there are paragraphs and paragraphs of run-on sentences that use permutations of the same phrase (to get the word density high enough for Google's algorithm to decide it's worthwhile). This ham-handed search engine optimization will (temporarily) give good page rankings, but ultimately, two things happen. The first is that human beings hit the site and quickly hit the back button, and secondly, Google eventually filters it out. When you see web pages with overly optimized landing pages, what you're really seeing is someone trying to boost a landing page's page rank in that short window of time, and sell it to another person who'll ...
... (hopefully) be sensible enough to fill it with realistic and useful content.

This same "realistic and useful" content is important for squeeze pages as well. Google will eventually notice if you just have a web site with a squeeze page and nothing else, and they're getting better at catching them earlier and often. This is bad for your business, because when Google filters you back down, all your hard-won traffic goes away, and it's even worse for your pocket book, as Google raises the price on click-through advertising for irrelevant pages.

Ultimately, you need to make a web site that's optimized for human searchers as well as Google search engine spiders. Doing so is fairly easy. Basically you need essays, and you need articles. You also need content that changes regularly, and that content should tie into your AdWords search terms. The simplest, and easiest way to do this is to take some of the material that would normally reside "behind" the squeeze page, rewrite it to a more general focus (think of writing teasers or sneak previews) and rotating it through your front pages, and pages linked to your landing pages.

As for means of generating content, the best way to do this is to get a group of your customers to do it for you. Bulletin board systems are great for this, as are customer testimonials in blog comments, or "rotator" pages that pull text from other demarcated parts of your web site. If your site has a technical aspect to it, or, simply, you lack the ability or time to write content yourself, there are several web sites where you can hire people to write content for you.

Remember, if there's nothing on your page that a human being would want to read, it doesn't matter what your Google-generated traffic levels are, your conversion rate is going to be horrible, and it's conversion rate that ultimately provides you with value.