Just as easy to promote a landing page as a Home Page?

[coastal]

I've never tried but is it just as easy to successfully promote a landing page as it is to promote a home page?

Do homepages rank higher simply because they are home pages?

The reason I ask is because I want some interior pages to rank VERY well for specific terms and I was debating between just buying new domain names or promote the heck out of the landing pages???

[VRI]

There's a couple of questions here but as I see em:

1. Do homepages rank higher simply because they are home pages?
They rank higher because they get the most juice. All of the pages in the site will link to home, most references are sought to home and most of the those that naturally link to you will link to your domain.

2. is it just as easy to successfully promote a landing page as it is to promote a home page?
Not quite for the above reasons but the strategy is the same. Feature the pages in your internal navigation and seek references to the page from other sites as you would your home page.

3. just buying new domain names or promote the heck out of the landing pages
Almost always you're better off focusing on the pages on your site as they will already be indexed, have the sand out of their shorts and already benefit from the strength and relevance of your existing domain.

[coastal]

The reason I ask is because I have an agent in my office who has an extended family of developers. She wanted to know if a new community should have it's own website or just be a page on her website with a domain name redirect to that individual page.

Agentsite.com/community-name/ would be the page

with a 301 redirected url of newcommunity.com to agentsite.com/communityname/

Then would you promote the 301 redirecturl of newcommunity.com or the longer agentsite.com/community-name/ url?

Would she be better off just to do a separate web site for the new community???

[Discover Davis Homes]

I would promote the landing page (community name). I don't think it's that difficult to get results. Here's one I have: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...state&aq=f&oq=

[ericbramlett]

Mike -

I say do both. You'll land listings with a neighborhood specific site, and your neighborhood specific landing page will rank almost immediately. I own 40% of the SERPs here with this method. You'll see that the landing pages outrank the community specific page, but it's my hope to eventually have the community specific page outrank the landing pages.

[jessiesc]

Mike -

I say do both. You'll land listings with a neighborhood specific site, and your neighborhood specific landing page will rank almost immediately. I own 40% of the SERPs here with this method. You'll see that the landing pages outrank the community specific page, but it's my hope to eventually have the community specific page outrank the landing pages.

I agree completely.

In addition, think about any print advertising they do for this community.

If you use a page link on print advertising, it is subject to errors. However, using a domain redirect, there is less likelihood of typing errors:

Example, which is easier to enter into a webbrowser:

www.mywebsite.com/subdivision.php

or

www.mysubdivision.com

[Bigtoe]

The reason I ask is because I have an agent in my office who has an extended family of developers. She wanted to know if a new community should have it's own website or just be a page on her website with a domain name redirect to that individual page.

Agentsite.com/community-name/ would be the page

with a 301 redirected url of newcommunity.com to agentsite.com/communityname/

Then would you promote the 301 redirecturl of newcommunity.com or the longer agentsite.com/community-name/ url?

Would she be better off just to do a separate web site for the new community???

By promoting a redirected domain I am guessing you mean with conventional advertising? If so this strategy has a drawback.

1. Most consumers use IE by default and the default browser is msn.
2. Most consumers do not know the difference between the address bar and the search bar.

The result is an advertised domain will be typed into msn and the intended site will not come up. Only god knows what might show up over there.

I learned this the hard expensive way.

[coastal]

Thanks for the MSN "effect" notice. Wasting $$ is no fun. I did a lot of that in 2005 -2007 when I was making more of it than I should have been. At that time I signed up with almost every advertiser who called.

Per the feedback given here I guess I'll do an actual site as well as a community page. Kim (The agent) was hoping to save some money by not having to create another site, but I guess if you are a housing developer the couple hundred dollars you will pay for a static site is no big deal.

[ericbramlett]

1. Most consumers use IE by default and the default browser is msn.
2. Most consumers do not know the difference between the address bar and the search bar.

The result is an advertised domain will be typed into msn and the intended site will not come up. Only god knows what might show up over there.

What??? I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but I disagree completely with what I think you're saying...

1) IE has ~60% of the market share, and MSN has <10% of the market share.
2) If someone types his advertised domain into the URL bar, it's obviously going to redirect to his intended site.
3) Worst case scenario, someone types the redirected site into the MSN live search bar, and it returns no results...like this.

So...basically you're worrying about the idiot population of the 10% of the 60% of total searchers that use MSN & IE - basically 6% of total searchers who happen to be idiots and don't know the difference between the URL & search bars. Using the same rationale, you should still optimize your screen for 800X600px resolution.

@Mike - I think you came to the right conclusion. IM me if you want to discuss hyper local sites - I've done a few that are successful.

[Bhamhomes]

I think what it really comes down to is a matter of preference and how much time you want to devote to the project. I have been doing what Eric described here with pretty good success as well...

I say do both. You'll land listings with a neighborhood specific site, and your neighborhood specific landing page will rank almost immediately.

If It was me...I would first build out an interior page (landing page) first and apply proper on site linking and SEO. Then create the separate more specific site...changing up the title tags, meta descriptions, content, etc. to hit the market from a different angle. You would be surprised at how well this works and how often you show up in the long tail of the search.