What is the purpose of a landing page?

A landing page is the webpage a person ends up on by clicking on a link. This term is often used to discuss commercial websites.

Essentially web designers want to create pages that are most tailored to the needs of the person who has clicked on a link and arrived at the landingpage.

These pages can be the front page of a website, or they might have other functions depending upon web page design.

There are lots of different landing page types. Some prompt a person who arrives at the page to do something, like fill out a form or register for a service. Others give specific information that the person clicking on the link is in search of.

For instance, clicking on a wiseGEEK link to a specific article sends the person straight to that article, and the article page itself can be called a landing page of sorts.

The goal of these pages, and really the goal of most web pages are to keep the customer or web user on the page and on the site.

Therefore any page designed as a landing point ought to be significantly engaging.
For instance if a landing page brings someone to the front page of a website, it ought to have enough information to keep the customer on the site, without too much information.

What web designers try to do is create pages that will most match the link the customer clicked on.

A landing page is a web page that appears when a visitor clicks on a PPC ad or a search engine result link.

The home page of a website is not the only landing page; every page in a website has a purpose and is a potential search engine landing page.

A landing page should contain content that relates to the keyword search phrase.

For example, searching in Google for website mockup should bring up web landing pages that contain content relating to the keyword phrase "website mockup".

What is the purpose of website landing pages?

Website landing pages can be used for a couple different purposes, pay per click/marketing campaigns and search engine optimization.

Using landing pages for pay per click and marketing campaigns can help determine a campaign's effectiveness.

For marketing purposes you can append a URL (http://www.yourdomainname.com/ppc) making it easier to look at your site analytics and see how well your page is doing.

If you are advertising in materials off of the internet by appending a URL you are directing visitors to a page that is created specifically for that advertisement which can allow you to easily measure its effectiveness.

Search engine optimized websites often contain many landing pages.
The more content a website has the higher its chances are to show up in the search engines. More landing pages also means more keyword phrase avenues a website can be found under.
Landing pages are a great way to increase the number of site sales, visitors and your search engine ranking.
SEO landing pages are designed to show up naturally in organic search engine listings.
Landing pages nearly always provide better conversion rates than directing all traffic to the home page.
This is because if brought to a website home page you are forcing visitors to search around the site for the information they want, whereas landing pages bring people directly to the content they seek.
Landing pages are very effective way of increasing your ROI.