One of the secrets of search engine marketing is the “landing page.” A landing page has typically been a single webpage often tied to a domain that serves a particular purpose. For example, we use the domain Mission Feeding(www.missionfeeding.org) to feature our food outreach. While that particular outreach rotates on the home page of our main website, Life today(www.lifetoday.org), it remains on the Mission Feeding domain year round. Landing pages can be buried within the primary domain, but for ease of memory and search engine placement, it’s more effective to use a dedicated domain.
For search engines, the fact that the keywords “mission” and “feeding” lie within the actual URL helps to rank it higher than competing websites. This practice is leading to more development of landing pages into an actual microsite, which is essentially a portion of your website placed on its own domain. In our case, we feature only the landing page on missionfeeding.org. If we were to place more information from lifetoday.org onto the outreach-specific domain, it would grow into a microsite. (For a high-end example of a microsite, see the website Mercedes-Benz launched to promote its C-class in the United Kingdom at Mercedes-Benz.
A good application of landing pages and microsites for ministries relates to products. Let’s say that your church has developed a product called “Pastor Joe’s Secrets to a Successful Prayer Life.” By registering the domain “pastorjoessecrets.com,” you can feature your product more heavily than on your church’s website where such attention to a product might not be appropriate. By making the full product name the title of the webpage (using the “title” metatag), you will soon dominate search engines when people seek a combination of keywords, like “pastor,” “joe” and “secret.” And with the ease of multimedia on websites you could even present a video clip of Pastor Joe urging people to get the product. You may not want that on the home page of your church, but it’s perfectly suited for a microsite.
Another interesting application of landing pages for ministries relates to direct mail and email. We use the domain Mission Feeding for direct mail response. On both email appeals and printed mail we offer people the option of giving through a URL that is specific to their mail piece. These are not individually customized, but grouped into various segments that we wish to track. For example, your email appeal may direct you to www.missionfeeding.com/food. This “landing page” merely redirects to a donation form, but by segmenting your group with the “food” tag, we are able to measure response to the email piece. The same is true for direct mail. Of course, when doing this type of segmentation, we also have the opportunity to place an actual landing page at the destination URL. That landing page can provide information, media or anything else we want to bring to your attention.
So take a look at your ministry’s presence online and ask, “Do I need a microsite or landing page?” There are many opportunities to effectively utilize these, although I would caution against building them just for the sake of having one. They do require maintenance and an outdated landing page can end up doing more damage than good in the long run. But with the opportunities for multimedia and search engine placement, a landing page or microsite can be very beneficial.
Here are a few ideas for landing pages and microsites that may suit your ministry, along with an example of an actual microsite (where I could find one):
• Products or sermon series I Need to Change
• Special events The Rock Christmas
• Ministries within your organization 180 Youth
• Mission outreaches Mission Water for Life
• Building campaigns
• Media outreaches Ed Young