Landing Page Case Study

Background

Bad PPC: A New Hampshire lawyer had created an Adwords campaign on his own, and though he received many clicks (and paid a lot for them), those clicks did not turn into new business. Reasons for this included the misconfiguration of the Adwords account (so that ads showed up for pages that would not have generated serious leads),  ineffective copy for the Adwords ad, and the lack of focused landing pages to get interested prospects to take action (call or email for a free consult).

Lukewarm SEO Design: On the "organic side", his website did not perform well for the targeted keyword phrases he had identified, because of inadequate on-page coding, ineffective choices for page URLs and titles, and poorly segmented or coded  copy targeting those keywords.  What was required was a new site map to back up the keywords he needed.  Also, the home page was "portal style" - a large image, lacking navigation or calls to action.

Process

  1. Stopping the Bleeding:  After a preliminary free consult over the phone, all Adwords campaigns were suspended, and a series of steps were recommended towards getting control of the site as a marketing tool.
  2. Choosing the Keywords: We began by identifying the best keyword phrases for each of the firm's practice areas. This took research as well as copy writer savvy. For example, "personal injury lawyers" came up higher than "personal injury lawyer".
  3. Developing the Site Map: In order to boost SEO, the site was re-conceived as separate domains (http://nh-<primarypracticearea>-<keyword>.com, http://<secondarypracticearea>-<keyword>-nh.com, http://new-hampshire-<thirdpracticearea>-<keyword>.com, http://new-hampshire-<fourthareaofpractice>-<keyword>s.com) with the company home site <companyname>.com functioning as a branding page and four-bucket portal to the others. Within each domain, there is a home page, a free consult page, and a case studies page, customized for clients seeking those services. 
  4. Re-designing the Site:  Although the original site's element of the boxing ring to support the "lawyer in your corner" was kept, the graphic focus was shifted to emphasize various Problem Situations (the reason for needing services) and the lawyer (qualification for providing services).
  5. Building Out the Pages:  Copy comes first. Every page required a specified title, meta description, meta tag list, and copy with sufficient keyword density.   After copy came design:  what calls to action should appear on each page?  Which should be in the form of internal links, and which as "pseudo-banners" to attract attention and get action?
  6. Configuring the Site:  Some pages needed to be excluded from the site map supplied to Google (to avoid duplicate content); a second Google Analytics account needed to be created for the new main domain and interlinked with Adwords, the robots.txt file was altered to guide search bots, and the virtual hosts file on the server was modified to redirect old page URLs to their newer counterparts.
  7. Adwords Coding: Before re-initiating the Adwords campaign, new landing pages were designed to "catch the ball" thrown by those specific ads. We begin with this PPC ad:

    Aggressive DWI Defenders
    Experienced NH DWI Attorneys
    Call Today: (603) <123-4567>!
    www.<primarypracticearea>-NH-<keyword>.com

    8. ­

    Next >> Step 8: Landing Page Design