Many online marketing consultants may try and convince you that landing pages + paid advertising are all you need to be successful online. That may be somewhat accurate depending on the product or service you provide. But for mainstream businesses like doctors, lawyers, dentists, speakers, coaches and healthcare providers, that are not selling digital products, website memberships, online training or webinar access and whose sole goal is to generate new client, patient or customer leads, landing pages can be a great strategy but they shouldn’t replace your websites. Instead, each needs to be built with the other in mind and work in sync to achieve your marketing goals.

While an effective website should be conversion-focused, a landing page strategy can offer greater specificity in terms of reaching your marketing goals and target audience.

To fully understand the difference between a landing page and the pages and posts on your business website, it’s important to discuss the differences between paid and organic search traffic.

When you ask the question “Do I need a landing page?” you really should know that most “experts” will tell you that they are designed specifically for paid traffic sources like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.

We are here to tell you that is no longer the case

In the past landing pages were used exclusively with paid advertising.

Why you ask?

Well that’s because, in general, landing pages have very sparse content that is not looked upon favorably by search engines like Google. This means that landing pages with very little relevant content would have basically no chance of ranking organically in search – so paid advertising was thought to be the only way to get traffic to the page.

So what’s the problem with paying for ads?

Well for one thing they can be very expensive. The search term “accident lawyer Chicago” will cost you $331 per click, while “auto insurance price quote” will run you just $97.48 every single time your ad is clicked. The average cost per click continues to rise every year with no relief in sight. Also, the minute you stop paying for ads your traffic dries up. This means that there is no “long-term” value to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. None of this means that you should not engage in PPC advertising, it simply means that you should be aware of the pitfalls of the platform and the financial investment that may be required to generate traffic.

Every year brings greater opportunities in the field of search marketing. As the volume of search queries performed by Google grows, the the greater the chances you have to drive traffic to your website and landing pages through targeted search results.

If you are like most web searchers, you tend to click on organic results as opposed to paid ads. Their have been numerous studies that have shown that in order to benefit from the traffic and organic clicks to your website and landing pages your business needs to hold a prominent organic position in the search results, namely page one.

Studies show that over 70% of search queries resulted in a click from an organic listing on the first page of Google. Search results that reside on page 2 and 3 get less than 6% of all clicks. Even more staggering is the fact that a whopping 67% of all clicks come from listings that appear in positions 1 -5 in the Google results.

So how much search traffic is left to go to Google paid ads? You can do the math. 

So if you think you are getting the most bang for your buck with your Google Ads campaign, we challenge you to take another look. Are you paying for expensive ads that provide instant gratification, but in the end provide no long-term value, minimal click through rate, poor lead quality and little to enhance your brand.

Another thing to consider is the fact that over one third of Google search queries are 4+ words long. These are called “Long Tail” searches. Longer search queries are narrower search queries, and narrower search queries are less competitive and easier to rank for. And while traffic volume for long tail keywords may be less, the quality of visitor is much better. That’s why long-tail keywords are crucial to consider for any online marketing campaign. They drive valuable traffic because searchers that use long tail search phrases are generally further along in the buying cycle and are ready to make a purchase or decision now.