Landing page problem

rromanf · #1 (**permalink**) 06-29-2007, 05:38 PM

Hi there, I am somewhat of a newbie to PPC. This is a lot of information on good landing pages for PPC.

I have the very unique problem though that we have an autoparts website that we do not have any admin access to and for every minor change we have to go through support and have them make changes. A lot of the times the changes take for ever, other times we are told it is not possible to make the changes.

Anyway, our site does not have a dedicated landing page and I cannot create one. My thought is whether we can set up a site under a different domain name (xy.com) to handle content and landing pages and then link to the store domain (ab.com) either directly or by the way of a subdomain (store.xy.com) which is then 301 redirected to the store domain (yz.com). Dealing with the issue this way we can manage our own content to increase the PR and be able to create and change our own landing pages. We are already using a 301 redirect at the moment as the original domain name for the site is just too hard to pronounce and remember.

I know the real answer to the problem is to give the webdevelopper the boot and find someone else, but that is not an immediate solution. We will be starting development with another company for a new site soon and we will be using the domain name for the landing page and content site for the new pages that we will develop soon. Does all this make sense? In my eyes this would work for us in several ways we would have landing pages we can create ourselves without making changes to the current site and the domain for our new domain would already be indexed, somewhat optimized and hopefully have a higher PR than a new one.

I am just not sure if we would get penalized by Google for redirecting traffic from the Adwords landing page to a different site. Maybe it is possible to use frames as well?

Our adwords campaign just received the wrath of the low Google quality score and virually all keywords have min.CPCs of 1.00 to 10.00.
Any insights will be greatly appreciated.

Ruben

**incrediblehelp** · #2 (**permalink**) 06-29-2007, 05:53 PM

So you will be developing a new website in the future that you will have access to. Why not wait to start your marketing efforts until then?

Like you said...it is basically outrageous not having access to your website and being able to make changes or add/delete pages. This is the true issue and until it is solved you will continue to run into many more issues. It needs to be solved first.

It doesn't make much sense to commit marketing efforts to a website temporarily and then switch back down the road.

deepsand · #3 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 05:25 PM

If gaining control of the existing site is not feasible, then creating an adjunct site that depends on its content is foolhardy.

Furthermore, if Google's given your Ad Words campaign for the existing site the kiss-of-death, why would you want to fight two battles that you can walk away from.

I'm with incrediblehelp on this one; abandon the old site and start anew. Make sure this time that you own both the domain & the hosting account, and have administrative access to each.

chrisJumbo · #4 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 05:26 PM

I inherited a site with a similar issue. They have a main web-site and then it is linked to an e-commerce site to handle the transactions. They don't have time to maintain either so I do. They certainly have the rights to maintain either, they just don't. This is also key. The shopping cart is an open source program. They are more than welcome to find instructions on how to use it. A web design company shouldn't keep your updates hostage.

That being said, the main site gets the traffic and then when someone wants to order there is an easy link to the shopping cart page to complete the transaction.

So I don't see a problem with creating a site XYZ Consulting that gives the product details, etc. (SEO optimized), and then just provides the link to the ecommerce site.

Of course, you would want the shopping cart to remember what they have added if they are going back and forth. That could be a problem.

But if they need turbo-orange widgets and you have xyx.com/turbo-organge-widgets and than that links to the widget store and then they continue to shop around at the store for other items, you should be fine.

cd :O)

SemAdvance · #5 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 05:51 PM

Actually there are many websites that for security reasons do not allow others admin access.

No need to give up the other site.

Create the new site as the front end and use the old site as the back end.

Put the new site on a separate hosting account on a different server and you can boost links to the old site or vice versa.

rromanf · #6 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 09:09 PM

Thanks for all the comments so far. I really did not expect the post would get on to the Newsletter but I guess there are other people in the same boat as me.

Here are a few more details to give everyone a better understanding of the situation. The site went live in September and though it was not that expensive to begin with, we are paying over $600/month for maintenance and access to the all the third party catalogs that make the site work. Getting a new site with similar features is going to cost us $20K just for the catalog access and then more for the website development and design and monthly fees for maintenance and catalog access. So we are trying to make the best out of the current situation until we found all the right vendors for all the services needed.
My thought was to use a second website just for content and landing pages and then use that site as part of the newly developed site once it is ready to go live (I do not see a point trying to battle with the current developer to have content and landing pages on the site if I cannot take my work with me to the new site). Until the new site is developed the "landing page/content site" would get indexed and hopefully aquire a better quality score and page rank. This would help to start the new site of at the end of the year if we use the same domain name as it really would not be seen as a new site.

After reading a lot of the postings here, I am just afraid that if I do not implement the "landing page site" correctly I will be seen as an affiliate page by Google and I would probably get slapped around a little more.

If you want some more precise information on the site please PM me and I will share a few more details with you.

ashukairy · #7 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 09:36 PM

Hi, I'm new to the forum. Seems like you've got yourself in quite a mess there! The only challenge I find is that you are hoping to close the sale through your website; so driving your clients the landing page and then forcing them to go to the other site can be very confusing especially if the domain is different. For Motorola.com, they had a different site for the Q, and the redirected the traffic from the Q landing page to the main page; but it was all under the same domain. But you have to work with what you have. My only question would be that if the content and material is exclusively yours; I don't see why you would struggle to find someone maintaining for a lot less than 20K. Anyways, if you can't find anyway around it, I recommend you create a site that holds the content and landing pages; but just make sure that you maintain some similarities with the site names in order for your buyer not to get too confused. I hope everything works out for you.

Good luck!

Ayat

rromanf · #8 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 09:54 PM

Ayat, Thanks for the tip. The $20K are for licensing fees for a large industry specific catalog and catalog info. There is really no content on the site apart from the catalog look-up and the part information once you went through the catalog. I have asked the developer to let us put content on the site and was told that we could upload Word documents or PDFs to the site for now. The problem is that I would not look at those even if I was desperate I do not like having to download something to look at it. My partners chose the developer before I joined them and I was sure they would have exercised more caution.

I was actually thinking of embedding the store site in the content site by means of an iframe or the sorts... I do not know if that is the best solution or not. Maybe our current developer can create a page that will better integrate into a separate content site or maybe we can just link straight to the catalog page.

ashukairy · #9 (**permalink**) 07-02-2007, 10:12 PM

Hi, I would experiment with a subdomain page that links to the catalog page. You really can't change the past and regret old decisions at this point; and you're doing the right thing by thinking outside of the box and working with what you have. Good luck!

webmaker · #10 (**permalink**) 07-03-2007, 02:23 AM

Would you be interested in beta testing something like this?
YODDLE Interfaces
I would be more than happy to give you a hand.

rromanf · #11 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 03:24 AM

Thank you for all your suggestions for the dilemma I am trying to comb through. I have gone the way of adding landing pages to a separate URL, that actually consists of the same three words as our main domain just separated by dashes. So the difference is probably not noticed by many visitors. the page design and feel is the same as on the ecommerce pages and all business logic links point to the appropriate pages on the ecommerce domain as well. We have added a blog as well in a subdomain and will link to it from the landing pages. We just got everything set up this past weekend and are waiting for some results. I will try and keep you posted.