Episode Transcript
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Chris Bonney (00:09):
Thanks for joining us again for another web
marketing insights podcast herefrom Gulo with me, Chris Bonney
is Zach Wilson as always.
Hi, Zach.
How are you doing today?
Good afternoon.
Great.
Thank you.
Good, good.
We've got a really cool topictoday, Zach.
We're calling it the anatomy ofthe homepage and it might not be
(00:35):
what you think for thoselistening.
So stick around to see what wehave to say about it because
there's some really coolphilosophical and sort of
conceptual ideas thateverybody's homepage, regardless
of what kind of business you'rein should probably follow or
think about.
And if you're not thinking aboutthese things, you really should
be, and Zach, I'll just jumpright in to content here is that
(00:58):
the question can be made or theargument could be made.
That may be for some people,Google is actually your
homepage, right?
And so what do we mean by that?
Well, if you're familiar withthe Google's search results page
on the right hand side of thepage, there can be what they
call a knowledge panel, and thatcan sometimes draw information
(01:21):
about your, who you are aboutyour company, about your
product, whatever it may be, andactually tell everybody
everything they need to knowabout it.
And then lead them to maybe notclick through to your homepage
from that.
If it's something that has to dowith that might even be
represented somewhere onWikipedia, that's likely to
maybe answer somebody's questionthat your homepage was hoping to
(01:43):
answer for somebody.
So what we need to do is thinkabout not only what are we
trying to convey on ourhomepage, but where is that
information that we're puttingon our homepage?
Where else is it represented toour future users or potential
users or returning users thatthey might be finding elsewhere
and then not getting to ourhomepage?
So when we look at our analyticsand we say, gosh, why is traffic
(02:05):
to our homepage going down?
It could very well be becausethey don't have to click past
their search results on Google,right?
So that's really a big thing tothink about.
And we can talk a little moreabout that as we go along, but
that's the one thing that as wewere talking about this podcast
and what we wanted to mentionthat really jumped out at me
that that's something to reallythink about, how can we make
(02:27):
sure that people are gettingwhat they need right on that
search results page, or makingsure that they're not getting
what they need and click throughto us.
Right.
So big, big thing to think aboutsomething else that comes to
mind is that there isn't justone homepage on your website
anymore.
Right.
There's multiple ones.
So, do you want to just kindajump in on that one, Zack, and
(02:49):
just talk a little bit aboutwhat we mean when we, when we
say that, that, yeah.
So as part of the, your searchand search,
Zach Wilson (03:00):
Either some of the things that we're trying to
accomplish, and we're trying toget people to appear as, as, as
are these either long tailcontent or top level landing
pages, the, that are related tothis long tail content.
And so what's happening now aswe see it and you just alluded
(03:23):
is the organic traffic is thatyou're seeing that you're likely
seeing on your site is not asheavily tilted as it used to be
towards the homepage.
And this is a product of theevolution of Google and Google
finding the valuable content andthe valuable pages on your site
(03:47):
that your visitors are engagingwith and interacting with.
And a part of, I mean, a part ofthat, which I'm wanted, I
thought you were going to say Iwas also was you know, that the
Holy grail of that people areseeking for in search now is,
(04:07):
are also snippet, keyword,snippets, right.
And featured snippets.
Sorry.
And, you know, and that's, asyou're, as you're alluding like
that, people likely aren't evencoming to your site anymore.
If you optimize something wellenough they get their answer,
(04:28):
they get their answer rightthere.
And there's no, there's no clickthrough, which is a sort of a
catch 22 because we want toprovide people with value and
answers.
But if we provide to are toogood of an answer, there's a
possibility that they might noteven click through to, to get
more information.
And then we can't, you know,capitalize on that.
(04:49):
So, but back to the landing, butback to the landing page part of
it, you know, and I think thatto hand it back to you is that
we, we, we look at, we look atsites from a technical SEO
perspective and we want it to bevery, very flat now, right?
(05:11):
So you've got your homepage andyou've got your sort of first
tier, which typically are yourlanding pages and a lot of your
value proposition of who you areand what you do as an
organization or our company.
And then, you know, below thatis your, your more long tail
content in your ancillary pages.
And we're, we treat the firstlevel of the homepage.
(05:35):
And the second level as anagency, we treat these the same.
These are, these are equalweight.
So what's happening now as, asa, as an agency that focuses on
conversions and results is wewant everything in the second
tier to be as, as, as, and welldesigned and well organized as
(06:00):
things in the first peer tierand, and what we've sort of
devised.
And this is not brain surgery.
A lot of people there do this,but it's this, this formula,
which is, you know, sort of, of,of telling your telling your
story and this anatomy, theanatomy of the homepage, right?
(06:21):
So, and this is something thatwe think about and talk about
from organizationally andstructure pages, again, home
pages and landing pages in this,in this fashion, so that your,
your getting, once your usergets there, you're not beating
them over the head with thewrong thing as you've, you've,
(06:42):
they get there and you'reallowed to there, you're giving
your user the opportunity toslowly consume whether it's
visually or written these partsor panes of the page.
And then, you know, finally, bamat the end, here's actually what
I want from you.
Right.
But like, as you said earlier,offline, as you know, the page
(07:05):
is not about you, the companyabout your co it's about your
customers and talking about yourcustomers.
So,
Chris Bonney (07:13):
Yeah, so, I mean, let's take that a step further.
So if we have to value pages onour site, I mean, it, it almost
feels like to me, that it used,we used to really think about
the homepage is the top of the,you know, the hierarchy and then
there's this secondary level ofpages.
And what you're saying is let'sgo ahead and drop that homepage
down into that role almostright.
(07:34):
And not put and have that thenjust, if we're just calling them
landing pages, right.
Topical whatever, you know,topic or concept or behind those
pages, if your homepage is justone of seven, one of eight, one
of 15, whatever it is.
And you want to understand whatthe goal of that page is, why
people are coming to that sitepage, how you're optimizing that
(07:56):
page and not put the idea thatevery single con constituent
under staff or your customers oryour membership or whatever it
might be, has to be served bythis home page.
Cause that's what we see, right.
A very centrist approach to thehomepage.
And the reason is, is because wesee it at the top of the
hierarchy, right.
(08:17):
If we drop that down and say,actually, it's just one of seven
pages, those other six are justas important because they're
about really important topics orconcepts or, or, you know, areas
of our organization, whatever itmight be.
I think that devaluing, itactually gives it the
opportunity to be more valuablebecause it's more focused.
Zach Wilson (08:38):
Yeah.
I agree.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (08:41):
How many landing pages is too many, if we're
talking about them as all theirother homepages.
Cause that's what I'm looking atit like, you can call your
homepage a homepage, but ifwe're going to drop it down and
equalize it with the otherseven, they're all homepages,
you know?
Right.
So is there a point where yougo, okay, 45 is too many, you
(09:01):
know, that's a little much forthe top tier.
How do you, how does somebodyknow?
Is, is it, or is it, is theresomething that SEO would dictate
or does it seem like maybe ifyou had$50 in pages you might
have 50 landing pages.
Zach Wilson (09:15):
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
I haven't really thought aboutthat.
And from our perspective from,you know, client to client,
it's, it varies so dramaticallyon the customer.
I mean, we were working onsomething right now.
That's, you know, they they're,they went from a 20 page site to
(09:37):
a two page site, right?
Like the two, the two landingpages.
And it's like, we're, you know,we're now consolidating all this
important information andorganizing in a way where you
don't have to go to the, the,the visitor doesn't have to go
to four different pages anymoreto consume all this information
that's just right there.
(09:58):
And so, yeah.
So, you know, classic answer isit totally depends.
But if there's, I I've, as we'veworked with, as we've worked on
things, I've yet to see anythingthat indicates that there's too
many.
I think that, yeah, the answerto too many is, is, is, is if
(10:20):
you're finding from a marketingperspective that you're, you're
really, you're, you're dilutingyour message, or you're not
having a SIS, a page that'sreally succinct and talking to
like map it back up to what'sthe URL of this page it's, you
know, shared services orwhatever.
(10:41):
But if you can't have a handfulof sections that are speaking
to, you know, why a customerwould be on this page and, and
solving a problem or answering aquestion to be on that page, it
probably shouldn't, it probablyshouldn't be a landing page and
you should probably rethinkwhat, where that lives
(11:03):
hierarchically and what thatactually means to a visitor to
answer their question.
So,
Chris Bonney (11:10):
So the, yeah.
Okay.
Maybe the question is, can youhave too few?
And the answer is, yeah.
If you're putting all your eggsin the homepage basket, as
people have done for so long andnot just kind of said, well,
wait a minute, why do we justhave to focus everything on
their homepage?
Because to your point, SEO issure if we look at our Google
(11:31):
analytics does a lot of organictraffic come through people's
homepage traditionally.
Sure.
But only because we're workingfrom the old mindset in most
cases, right.
And the mindset needs to be thatisn't the only entry point to
our, to our site.
In fact, that might be the least, you know, the one we want have
(11:53):
people show up to the least,because that means they've come
to us for whatever reason thatwe weren't necessarily maybe
even optimizing for we'd preferthat someone that wanted to do X
search for ax and got to thelanding page that talks about X
feeling up on a front page,you're gonna, you're one more
click away from where you wantto be.
So direct correlation, like yousaid, to search engine
optimization, for sure.
Zach Wilson (12:15):
Yeah, yeah.
And you're just, you just sortof triggered something for me
because in terms of, in terms ofthinking about customers and
verticals I think that, youknow, if you're a, let's just
say a, a service professionalservices B to B company, or if
(12:38):
you're, I k now a softwarecompany, y ou know, where, where
does this, where does, how doyou answer this question?
And the answer to this questionis if you're a B2B or a software
company, whatever t hat you wantto have a page that can m ap
back to your audience.
(12:58):
Right.
And that can, and w e'reincidentally, I mean, we're
working i n this internally,right?
Like we're trying to talk to ouraudiences more specifically on
these landing pages so that,Hey, I can talk to, you know, a
customer a and the, the, t he,the entire vibe of the page from
(13:20):
pictures to B talks to themspecifically, and then, Oh, w
e'll take it a step further.
Are my customers consumerpackaged goods?
Are they, you know, direct toconsumers?
Well, you know, take it a stepfurther and whether where that
lives hierarchically, but we canmap that from an SEO perspective
(13:40):
to, you know consumer packagedgoods companies looking for
marketing optimization software,what marketing automation,
software, whatever.
And that helps you from a searchperspective, create that sort of
like that pillar content andthat landing page.
And then you can start to spideroff and, you know, build up that
(14:02):
content.
But, you know, strategically,that's, that's, that's a lot of
that's a lot of what we do andhow we, how we structure those
things.
Again, this is just audiences,but it can be audiences,
services, whatever offerings, ifyou're an organization, you
know, it can be advocacy andcampaigns and things like that,
(14:23):
but whatever, whatever you'redoing as a company or an entity,
you want those landing pages tomap back to, you know, let's
just call it your mission oryour sort of statement and your
goals as a, as a, as a business.
Chris Bonney (14:39):
Right.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
So we've talked about, justbriefly about how we want to
think about the actual Googlesearch results page is in some,
your new homepage in some ways,and people have sort of thought
about this and talked about thisa little over time, but I think
now more than ever, if you'renot thinking about how people
(15:00):
are taking in your content onthe search results page, and
therefore not clicking throughexamine that because you want to
be represented well there,secondly, we said your homepage
maybe should be dropped downhierarchically to be level with
your landing pages, because itreally is just one of several
landing pages.
(15:20):
You might not be able to havetoo many, but you can definitely
have too few, one or two.
It's probably too few.
If you just have a homepage.
And that's the only page you'rereally focusing on and trying to
please everybody with, that'snot where you want to be.
And cert allows people to enteryour site across all optimized
landing pages, which is waybetter than just coming through
your homepage now.
(15:41):
So those are two great points.
Now here's the third thing Ithought we might talk about
today too, is let's go to thehomepage, let's go to your
actual homepage.
And while we might not want tosay, you gotta have a hero,
that's this many pixels high,and you know, let's not do that,
but let's talk about what theelements of a successful
homepage are.
(16:02):
And, and, you know, outside ofcopy and visuals, the, the, the
philosophies we need to sort ofbe thinking about, for the
homepage.
One is that we're talking aboutourselves is trying to make that
connection and this, and let's,let's put a caveat in here that
(16:23):
this is actually relates, notjust to your homepage homepage,
but to all those landing pages,this should be, these should be
things you're considering acrossall of them.
And one of them is, and you,you, you brought it up for a
split second already is yourhomepage.
Shouldn't be telling the worldwhat you do, your landing page.
Doesn't have to tell the worldwhat you do.
(16:43):
You can convey that throughtalking to the customer or the
member or your constituents,whatever they may be in their
own words, in their language,talking about how you will solve
their problems.
Right.
So do you want to expand on thatjust a little bit, Zach, as to,
it's so easy to talk about, it'sa little harder to pull off,
Zach Wilson (17:07):
To expand the customer's problems.
Chris Bonney (17:10):
Yeah.
Just to talk about them and nottalk about yourself.
Right.
I mean, that's just you know,that that's easy for me to
disinter and say it it's alittle harder to, to pull off.
What are some of your thoughtsabout how best to maybe do that?
Zach Wilson (17:25):
I think the, one of the compositions that we'd look
at and you've said is, you know,focusing on the awareness
interest desire action, right?
One way, that's one, that's oneway to give yourself a
(17:45):
framework, if you will.
That's a little broader,something that we've been
working on, as well is, and we,we, we can put up a graphic for
this too.
For both of these, I think is totell the story and to solve
(18:08):
those customer problems, likeyou said, is talk about your
customer, not yourself, right.
And talk about the need of thatcustomer.
Talk about the problem of thatcustomer.
Talk about guide that customerthrough the solution, give them
a clear plan to how they cansolve that problem and solve the
(18:32):
question, answer that solution.
And then, you know, then givethem, then give them an
opportunity to do something,right.
Some sort of engagement.
And furthermore, lastly, likejustify that like, Hey, we've,
we've, we're great at doingthis.
We've won awards.
We've, we've got customers,testimonials, whatever you're
(18:53):
talking about, your successeslist, your clients, very typical
brand bar, but like the power ofthe power of, and more and more
specifically, if there's alanding page for a services
company, like if I'm going backto my example of you know,
direct to consumer.
Yeah.
And I'm a direct to consumersome company, and I see that,
(19:14):
Oh, you've worked with, you'veworked with Gillette, you've
worked with P and G.
You've worked with Colgate.
You've worked.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Well, these are like mindedbrands that are in my category
that I can trust and know, evenif you're not a tier one CPG,
but like, you're, you're maybesome sort of startup or
(19:34):
whatever, but it's like, well,that's, that's super powerful.
Right.
And, and, and, and I think that,you know, that, that composition
in terms of how you can solvethat problem and there's, you
know, there's a zillion ways todo this.
Like you said, it's, there's,there's copy there's, there's,
there's empathy, there's,there's design and there's their
(19:59):
storytelling through the visualsand, and the actual lens,
whether that's, you knowphotography or something like
that.
So there's a lot of ways tobuild the, build this case and
really solve those problems thatare in addition to the
framework, the copy, you know,there's a lot of things that are
(20:20):
really like that, that reallybring this whole thing together.
Not just one.
So hopefully that answers yourquestion.
Chris Bonney (20:31):
No, that's great.
Yeah.
And we talked, I mean, and, and,and again, I mean, the point is,
if your landing pages, yourhomepage is, if it's, if they're
just self-serving right.
If they're, if they're, ifyou're just talking about
yourself and saying, well,people want to know what we do,
that's why they're at ourwebsite.
That's true.
That checks like the most basicrudimentary box and that's
(20:53):
things we've talked about too.
Number one is when people cometo your homepage, they shouldn't
be confused landing page.
They can't be confused as towhat you're trying to tell them
or what you do.
If you're confusing them, bysaying, we craft, you know,
digital experiences for the newage of whatever.
Like how about, you know, we'llhelp you with your digital
(21:14):
marketing, you know, like, keepit a little simple.
Don't let people get confused bywhat you actually do.
So you want to have that be apart of it.
What are you trying to tell me?
This page is about telling youX.
Okay, great.
But B but the minute they knowthey're on the right page, that
emotional draw, that emotionalconnection needs to happen.
(21:35):
Right?
So if you offer a social mediamarketing services, right, you
might not say, well, we do thisand we do social marketing.
We'll send the tat the posts foryou.
We'll write the posts for you.
We do this for 50 other clients.
That might sound great.
But what if you just said, doyou ever wonder if you're
(21:58):
reaching the right people onsocial media?
Do you ever look at your socialmedia metrics and wonder how you
should be changing what you doaround your campaigns to make
them better?
Those are just two wildlydifferent approaches and you can
see just, I, it seems intuitiveto me that by saying, yeah,
those are the two things thatkind of keep me up at night.
And maybe you could name 10more, but the minute you pull
(22:20):
them in and you go, Oh, you getme, right.
It's like any kind of startingany kind of relationship.
You get me.
It's not just about you.
It's about how you get me.
That's, you know, that's how youpull people in.
And it's also a differentiatorbecause as you look at your
competitor's site, every sectionof their landing pages or
homepages that all they're doingis talking about themselves.
(22:42):
That's your opportunity to go.
We're going to have thatsection.
We're going to talk about ourcustomers, right.
So I feel like that's, that'shuge.
I mean, again, easy to sit hereand talk about it, but it is
it's harder to do.
And if you need to hire peopleout to help you with that that's
a good idea too, becausesometimes you can be too close
to your own business to make thecalls on what those things are.
(23:04):
And if you haven't done youraudience research, right.
If you haven't done youraudience research and you
haven't heard from, you know,voice of the customer kind of
stuff, and using their own wordsback to them, then you're
missing an opportunity to, but,I think that those are some huge
takeaways for your homepage.
I want to go back to one morething you said to there's a four
(23:28):
piece sort of formula.
That's pretty basic, but we useit when we talk about the sales
funnel.
We use it.
When we talk about buildingpages, I just want to go back to
it real quick is the, awarenessright?
First, then we build interest inwhat we're doing.
The customer gets a desire towork with us.
And the last part is action.
A I D a a.
(23:50):
And if you're thinking abouteverything you do in pulling
someone through that process,you're going to have a winner as
well.
A lot of times when we'rewriting, copy, we say each
sentence we're writing is justgetting the person, reading it
to read the next sentence, samething with your homepage, right?
We're trying to pull peoplethrough the page with a story to
(24:10):
get them where we want them togo or landing page, especially
that might have a call to actionin it somewhere, a lead
generation, page supplies, allof it.
So, so I think those are sort ofthe three big things we wanted
to cover today in the anatomy, ahomepage, and actually not talk
about the real estate on yourown page, because let's face it.
There isn't really one, right?
(24:32):
There's your landing pages andyour homepage is one of them
there's Google, and then there'show you approach it.
So, maybe this is a topic wecould even discuss it in a
second part podcast at somepoint, cause there's probably
plenty to talk about, but, thoseare some really big points today
to cover Zach, did you, is thereanything else you wanted to
close on?
As we wrap up or next time Iwant to talk about left and
(24:56):
right ventricles of the heartactually, because there you go.
Nice.
Nice.
No, I think that's great.
That should sum it up andhopefully, you know, we can as
(25:17):
part of t his, I think we canprovide we should provide a
people, a l ink to, a couple ofthose resources and the and the
comments below and on the yeah,on the podcast page for that,
that would be, that would begreat, just so that they have
those.And we look forward to ifanyone has anything that they
(25:39):
want us to actually just opineon and just sa y, is it m
atching up to the sort offormula and feel the flow of it
please reach out to myself orChris.
We'd love to just take a look atit.
We love asserting our, our, ouropinions and years of
(26:02):
experience.
So let us know.
We'd love to hear about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
That's great.
Yeah.
So with that, we'll close outthis episode of the web
marketing insights podcast.
Thhis is Chris Bonney signingoff with Zach Wilson from Gulo.
We hope to see you guys againreal soon and thanks for tuning
in take care.
(26:23):
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Go to GuloSolutions.com to learnmore about us, subscribe to our
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Also, if you can hit subscribeon our channel here on YouTube,
that would be great as well.
Thanks for joining us again for another web
marketing insights podcast herefrom Gulo with me, Chris Bonney
is Zach Wilson as always.
Hi, Zach.
How are you doing today?
Good afternoon.
Great.
Thank you.
Good, good.
We've got a really cool topictoday, Zach.
We're calling it the anatomy ofthe homepage and it might not be
(00:35):
what you think for thoselistening.
So stick around to see what wehave to say about it because
there's some really coolphilosophical and sort of
conceptual ideas thateverybody's homepage, regardless
of what kind of business you'rein should probably follow or
think about.
And if you're not thinking aboutthese things, you really should
be, and Zach, I'll just jumpright in to content here is that
(00:58):
the question can be made or theargument could be made.
That may be for some people,Google is actually your
homepage, right?
And so what do we mean by that?
Well, if you're familiar withthe Google's search results page
on the right hand side of thepage, there can be what they
call a knowledge panel, and thatcan sometimes draw information
(01:21):
about your, who you are aboutyour company, about your
product, whatever it may be, andactually tell everybody
everything they need to knowabout it.
And then lead them to maybe notclick through to your homepage
from that.
If it's something that has to dowith that might even be
represented somewhere onWikipedia, that's likely to
maybe answer somebody's questionthat your homepage was hoping to
(01:43):
answer for somebody.
So what we need to do is thinkabout not only what are we
trying to convey on ourhomepage, but where is that
information that we're puttingon our homepage?
Where else is it represented toour future users or potential
users or returning users thatthey might be finding elsewhere
and then not getting to ourhomepage?
So when we look at our analyticsand we say, gosh, why is traffic
(02:05):
to our homepage going down?
It could very well be becausethey don't have to click past
their search results on Google,right?
So that's really a big thing tothink about.
And we can talk a little moreabout that as we go along, but
that's the one thing that as wewere talking about this podcast
and what we wanted to mentionthat really jumped out at me
that that's something to reallythink about, how can we make
(02:27):
sure that people are gettingwhat they need right on that
search results page, or makingsure that they're not getting
what they need and click throughto us.
Right.
So big, big thing to think aboutsomething else that comes to
mind is that there isn't justone homepage on your website
anymore.
Right.
There's multiple ones.
So, do you want to just kindajump in on that one, Zack, and
(02:49):
just talk a little bit aboutwhat we mean when we, when we
say that, that, yeah.
So as part of the, your searchand search,
Zach Wilson (03:00):
Either some of the things that we're trying to
accomplish, and we're trying toget people to appear as, as, as
are these either long tailcontent or top level landing
pages, the, that are related tothis long tail content.
And so what's happening now aswe see it and you just alluded
(03:23):
is the organic traffic is thatyou're seeing that you're likely
seeing on your site is not asheavily tilted as it used to be
towards the homepage.
And this is a product of theevolution of Google and Google
finding the valuable content andthe valuable pages on your site
(03:47):
that your visitors are engagingwith and interacting with.
And a part of, I mean, a part ofthat, which I'm wanted, I
thought you were going to say Iwas also was you know, that the
Holy grail of that people areseeking for in search now is,
(04:07):
are also snippet, keyword,snippets, right.
And featured snippets.
Sorry.
And, you know, and that's, asyou're, as you're alluding like
that, people likely aren't evencoming to your site anymore.
If you optimize something wellenough they get their answer,
(04:28):
they get their answer rightthere.
And there's no, there's no clickthrough, which is a sort of a
catch 22 because we want toprovide people with value and
answers.
But if we provide to are toogood of an answer, there's a
possibility that they might noteven click through to, to get
more information.
And then we can't, you know,capitalize on that.
(04:49):
So, but back to the landing, butback to the landing page part of
it, you know, and I think thatto hand it back to you is that
we, we, we look at, we look atsites from a technical SEO
perspective and we want it to bevery, very flat now, right?
(05:11):
So you've got your homepage andyou've got your sort of first
tier, which typically are yourlanding pages and a lot of your
value proposition of who you areand what you do as an
organization or our company.
And then, you know, below thatis your, your more long tail
content in your ancillary pages.
And we're, we treat the firstlevel of the homepage.
(05:35):
And the second level as anagency, we treat these the same.
These are, these are equalweight.
So what's happening now as, asa, as an agency that focuses on
conversions and results is wewant everything in the second
tier to be as, as, as, and welldesigned and well organized as
(06:00):
things in the first peer tierand, and what we've sort of
devised.
And this is not brain surgery.
A lot of people there do this,but it's this, this formula,
which is, you know, sort of, of,of telling your telling your
story and this anatomy, theanatomy of the homepage, right?
(06:21):
So, and this is something thatwe think about and talk about
from organizationally andstructure pages, again, home
pages and landing pages in this,in this fashion, so that your,
your getting, once your usergets there, you're not beating
them over the head with thewrong thing as you've, you've,
(06:42):
they get there and you'reallowed to there, you're giving
your user the opportunity toslowly consume whether it's
visually or written these partsor panes of the page.
And then, you know, finally, bamat the end, here's actually what
I want from you.
Right.
But like, as you said earlier,offline, as you know, the page
(07:05):
is not about you, the companyabout your co it's about your
customers and talking about yourcustomers.
So,
Chris Bonney (07:13):
Yeah, so, I mean, let's take that a step further.
So if we have to value pages onour site, I mean, it, it almost
feels like to me, that it used,we used to really think about
the homepage is the top of the,you know, the hierarchy and then
there's this secondary level ofpages.
And what you're saying is let'sgo ahead and drop that homepage
down into that role almostright.
(07:34):
And not put and have that thenjust, if we're just calling them
landing pages, right.
Topical whatever, you know,topic or concept or behind those
pages, if your homepage is justone of seven, one of eight, one
of 15, whatever it is.
And you want to understand whatthe goal of that page is, why
people are coming to that sitepage, how you're optimizing that
(07:56):
page and not put the idea thatevery single con constituent
under staff or your customers oryour membership or whatever it
might be, has to be served bythis home page.
Cause that's what we see, right.
A very centrist approach to thehomepage.
And the reason is, is because wesee it at the top of the
hierarchy, right.
(08:17):
If we drop that down and say,actually, it's just one of seven
pages, those other six are justas important because they're
about really important topics orconcepts or, or, you know, areas
of our organization, whatever itmight be.
I think that devaluing, itactually gives it the
opportunity to be more valuablebecause it's more focused.
Zach Wilson (08:38):
Yeah.
I agree.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (08:41):
How many landing pages is too many, if we're
talking about them as all theirother homepages.
Cause that's what I'm looking atit like, you can call your
homepage a homepage, but ifwe're going to drop it down and
equalize it with the otherseven, they're all homepages,
you know?
Right.
So is there a point where yougo, okay, 45 is too many, you
(09:01):
know, that's a little much forthe top tier.
How do you, how does somebodyknow?
Is, is it, or is it, is theresomething that SEO would dictate
or does it seem like maybe ifyou had$50 in pages you might
have 50 landing pages.
Zach Wilson (09:15):
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
I haven't really thought aboutthat.
And from our perspective from,you know, client to client,
it's, it varies so dramaticallyon the customer.
I mean, we were working onsomething right now.
That's, you know, they they're,they went from a 20 page site to
(09:37):
a two page site, right?
Like the two, the two landingpages.
And it's like, we're, you know,we're now consolidating all this
important information andorganizing in a way where you
don't have to go to the, the,the visitor doesn't have to go
to four different pages anymoreto consume all this information
that's just right there.
(09:58):
And so, yeah.
So, you know, classic answer isit totally depends.
But if there's, I I've, as we'veworked with, as we've worked on
things, I've yet to see anythingthat indicates that there's too
many.
I think that, yeah, the answerto too many is, is, is, is if
(10:20):
you're finding from a marketingperspective that you're, you're
really, you're, you're dilutingyour message, or you're not
having a SIS, a page that'sreally succinct and talking to
like map it back up to what'sthe URL of this page it's, you
know, shared services orwhatever.
(10:41):
But if you can't have a handfulof sections that are speaking
to, you know, why a customerwould be on this page and, and
solving a problem or answering aquestion to be on that page, it
probably shouldn't, it probablyshouldn't be a landing page and
you should probably rethinkwhat, where that lives
(11:03):
hierarchically and what thatactually means to a visitor to
answer their question.
So,
Chris Bonney (11:10):
So the, yeah.
Okay.
Maybe the question is, can youhave too few?
And the answer is, yeah.
If you're putting all your eggsin the homepage basket, as
people have done for so long andnot just kind of said, well,
wait a minute, why do we justhave to focus everything on
their homepage?
Because to your point, SEO issure if we look at our Google
(11:31):
analytics does a lot of organictraffic come through people's
homepage traditionally.
Sure.
But only because we're workingfrom the old mindset in most
cases, right.
And the mindset needs to be thatisn't the only entry point to
our, to our site.
In fact, that might be the least, you know, the one we want have
(11:53):
people show up to the least,because that means they've come
to us for whatever reason thatwe weren't necessarily maybe
even optimizing for we'd preferthat someone that wanted to do X
search for ax and got to thelanding page that talks about X
feeling up on a front page,you're gonna, you're one more
click away from where you wantto be.
So direct correlation, like yousaid, to search engine
optimization, for sure.
Zach Wilson (12:15):
Yeah, yeah.
And you're just, you just sortof triggered something for me
because in terms of, in terms ofthinking about customers and
verticals I think that, youknow, if you're a, let's just
say a, a service professionalservices B to B company, or if
(12:38):
you're, I k now a softwarecompany, y ou know, where, where
does this, where does, how doyou answer this question?
And the answer to this questionis if you're a B2B or a software
company, whatever t hat you wantto have a page that can m ap
back to your audience.
(12:58):
Right.
And that can, and w e'reincidentally, I mean, we're
working i n this internally,right?
Like we're trying to talk to ouraudiences more specifically on
these landing pages so that,Hey, I can talk to, you know, a
customer a and the, the, t he,the entire vibe of the page from
(13:20):
pictures to B talks to themspecifically, and then, Oh, w
e'll take it a step further.
Are my customers consumerpackaged goods?
Are they, you know, direct toconsumers?
Well, you know, take it a stepfurther and whether where that
lives hierarchically, but we canmap that from an SEO perspective
(13:40):
to, you know consumer packagedgoods companies looking for
marketing optimization software,what marketing automation,
software, whatever.
And that helps you from a searchperspective, create that sort of
like that pillar content andthat landing page.
And then you can start to spideroff and, you know, build up that
(14:02):
content.
But, you know, strategically,that's, that's, that's a lot of
that's a lot of what we do andhow we, how we structure those
things.
Again, this is just audiences,but it can be audiences,
services, whatever offerings, ifyou're an organization, you
know, it can be advocacy andcampaigns and things like that,
(14:23):
but whatever, whatever you'redoing as a company or an entity,
you want those landing pages tomap back to, you know, let's
just call it your mission oryour sort of statement and your
goals as a, as a, as a business.
Chris Bonney (14:39):
Right.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
So we've talked about, justbriefly about how we want to
think about the actual Googlesearch results page is in some,
your new homepage in some ways,and people have sort of thought
about this and talked about thisa little over time, but I think
now more than ever, if you'renot thinking about how people
(15:00):
are taking in your content onthe search results page, and
therefore not clicking throughexamine that because you want to
be represented well there,secondly, we said your homepage
maybe should be dropped downhierarchically to be level with
your landing pages, because itreally is just one of several
landing pages.
(15:20):
You might not be able to havetoo many, but you can definitely
have too few, one or two.
It's probably too few.
If you just have a homepage.
And that's the only page you'rereally focusing on and trying to
please everybody with, that'snot where you want to be.
And cert allows people to enteryour site across all optimized
landing pages, which is waybetter than just coming through
your homepage now.
(15:41):
So those are two great points.
Now here's the third thing Ithought we might talk about
today too, is let's go to thehomepage, let's go to your
actual homepage.
And while we might not want tosay, you gotta have a hero,
that's this many pixels high,and you know, let's not do that,
but let's talk about what theelements of a successful
homepage are.
(16:02):
And, and, you know, outside ofcopy and visuals, the, the, the
philosophies we need to sort ofbe thinking about, for the
homepage.
One is that we're talking aboutourselves is trying to make that
connection and this, and let's,let's put a caveat in here that
(16:23):
this is actually relates, notjust to your homepage homepage,
but to all those landing pages,this should be, these should be
things you're considering acrossall of them.
And one of them is, and you,you, you brought it up for a
split second already is yourhomepage.
Shouldn't be telling the worldwhat you do, your landing page.
Doesn't have to tell the worldwhat you do.
(16:43):
You can convey that throughtalking to the customer or the
member or your constituents,whatever they may be in their
own words, in their language,talking about how you will solve
their problems.
Right.
So do you want to expand on thatjust a little bit, Zach, as to,
it's so easy to talk about, it'sa little harder to pull off,
Zach Wilson (17:07):
To expand the customer's problems.
Chris Bonney (17:10):
Yeah.
Just to talk about them and nottalk about yourself.
Right.
I mean, that's just you know,that that's easy for me to
disinter and say it it's alittle harder to, to pull off.
What are some of your thoughtsabout how best to maybe do that?
Zach Wilson (17:25):
I think the, one of the compositions that we'd look
at and you've said is, you know,focusing on the awareness
interest desire action, right?
One way, that's one, that's oneway to give yourself a
(17:45):
framework, if you will.
That's a little broader,something that we've been
working on, as well is, and we,we, we can put up a graphic for
this too.
For both of these, I think is totell the story and to solve
(18:08):
those customer problems, likeyou said, is talk about your
customer, not yourself, right.
And talk about the need of thatcustomer.
Talk about the problem of thatcustomer.
Talk about guide that customerthrough the solution, give them
a clear plan to how they cansolve that problem and solve the
(18:32):
question, answer that solution.
And then, you know, then givethem, then give them an
opportunity to do something,right.
Some sort of engagement.
And furthermore, lastly, likejustify that like, Hey, we've,
we've, we're great at doingthis.
We've won awards.
We've, we've got customers,testimonials, whatever you're
(18:53):
talking about, your successeslist, your clients, very typical
brand bar, but like the power ofthe power of, and more and more
specifically, if there's alanding page for a services
company, like if I'm going backto my example of you know,
direct to consumer.
Yeah.
And I'm a direct to consumersome company, and I see that,
(19:14):
Oh, you've worked with, you'veworked with Gillette, you've
worked with P and G.
You've worked with Colgate.
You've worked.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Well, these are like mindedbrands that are in my category
that I can trust and know, evenif you're not a tier one CPG,
but like, you're, you're maybesome sort of startup or
(19:34):
whatever, but it's like, well,that's, that's super powerful.
Right.
And, and, and, and I think that,you know, that, that composition
in terms of how you can solvethat problem and there's, you
know, there's a zillion ways todo this.
Like you said, it's, there's,there's copy there's, there's,
there's empathy, there's,there's design and there's their
(19:59):
storytelling through the visualsand, and the actual lens,
whether that's, you knowphotography or something like
that.
So there's a lot of ways tobuild the, build this case and
really solve those problems thatare in addition to the
framework, the copy, you know,there's a lot of things that are
(20:20):
really like that, that reallybring this whole thing together.
Not just one.
So hopefully that answers yourquestion.
Chris Bonney (20:31):
No, that's great.
Yeah.
And we talked, I mean, and, and,and again, I mean, the point is,
if your landing pages, yourhomepage is, if it's, if they're
just self-serving right.
If they're, if they're, ifyou're just talking about
yourself and saying, well,people want to know what we do,
that's why they're at ourwebsite.
That's true.
That checks like the most basicrudimentary box and that's
(20:53):
things we've talked about too.
Number one is when people cometo your homepage, they shouldn't
be confused landing page.
They can't be confused as towhat you're trying to tell them
or what you do.
If you're confusing them, bysaying, we craft, you know,
digital experiences for the newage of whatever.
Like how about, you know, we'llhelp you with your digital
(21:14):
marketing, you know, like, keepit a little simple.
Don't let people get confused bywhat you actually do.
So you want to have that be apart of it.
What are you trying to tell me?
This page is about telling youX.
Okay, great.
But B but the minute they knowthey're on the right page, that
emotional draw, that emotionalconnection needs to happen.
(21:35):
Right?
So if you offer a social mediamarketing services, right, you
might not say, well, we do thisand we do social marketing.
We'll send the tat the posts foryou.
We'll write the posts for you.
We do this for 50 other clients.
That might sound great.
But what if you just said, doyou ever wonder if you're
(21:58):
reaching the right people onsocial media?
Do you ever look at your socialmedia metrics and wonder how you
should be changing what you doaround your campaigns to make
them better?
Those are just two wildlydifferent approaches and you can
see just, I, it seems intuitiveto me that by saying, yeah,
those are the two things thatkind of keep me up at night.
And maybe you could name 10more, but the minute you pull
(22:20):
them in and you go, Oh, you getme, right.
It's like any kind of startingany kind of relationship.
You get me.
It's not just about you.
It's about how you get me.
That's, you know, that's how youpull people in.
And it's also a differentiatorbecause as you look at your
competitor's site, every sectionof their landing pages or
homepages that all they're doingis talking about themselves.
(22:42):
That's your opportunity to go.
We're going to have thatsection.
We're going to talk about ourcustomers, right.
So I feel like that's, that'shuge.
I mean, again, easy to sit hereand talk about it, but it is
it's harder to do.
And if you need to hire peopleout to help you with that that's
a good idea too, becausesometimes you can be too close
to your own business to make thecalls on what those things are.
(23:04):
And if you haven't done youraudience research, right.
If you haven't done youraudience research and you
haven't heard from, you know,voice of the customer kind of
stuff, and using their own wordsback to them, then you're
missing an opportunity to, but,I think that those are some huge
takeaways for your homepage.
I want to go back to one morething you said to there's a four
(23:28):
piece sort of formula.
That's pretty basic, but we useit when we talk about the sales
funnel.
We use it.
When we talk about buildingpages, I just want to go back to
it real quick is the, awarenessright?
First, then we build interest inwhat we're doing.
The customer gets a desire towork with us.
And the last part is action.
A I D a a.
(23:50):
And if you're thinking abouteverything you do in pulling
someone through that process,you're going to have a winner as
well.
A lot of times when we'rewriting, copy, we say each
sentence we're writing is justgetting the person, reading it
to read the next sentence, samething with your homepage, right?
We're trying to pull peoplethrough the page with a story to
(24:10):
get them where we want them togo or landing page, especially
that might have a call to actionin it somewhere, a lead
generation, page supplies, allof it.
So, so I think those are sort ofthe three big things we wanted
to cover today in the anatomy, ahomepage, and actually not talk
about the real estate on yourown page, because let's face it.
There isn't really one, right?
(24:32):
There's your landing pages andyour homepage is one of them
there's Google, and then there'show you approach it.
So, maybe this is a topic wecould even discuss it in a
second part podcast at somepoint, cause there's probably
plenty to talk about, but, thoseare some really big points today
to cover Zach, did you, is thereanything else you wanted to
close on?
As we wrap up or next time Iwant to talk about left and
(24:56):
right ventricles of the heartactually, because there you go.
Nice.
Nice.
No, I think that's great.
That should sum it up andhopefully, you know, we can as
(25:17):
part of t his, I think we canprovide we should provide a
people, a l ink to, a couple ofthose resources and the and the
comments below and on the yeah,on the podcast page for that,
that would be, that would begreat, just so that they have
those.And we look forward to ifanyone has anything that they
(25:39):
want us to actually just opineon and just sa y, is it m
atching up to the sort offormula and feel the flow of it
please reach out to myself orChris.
We'd love to just take a look atit.
We love asserting our, our, ouropinions and years of
(26:02):
experience.
So let us know.
We'd love to hear about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
That's great.
Yeah.
So with that, we'll close outthis episode of the web
marketing insights podcast.
Thhis is Chris Bonney signingoff with Zach Wilson from Gulo.
We hope to see you guys againreal soon and thanks for tuning
in take care.
(26:23):
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Go to GuloSolutions.com to learnmore about us, subscribe to our
newsletter.
Also, if you can hit subscribeon our channel here on YouTube,
that would be great as well.
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