Landing page question

Should you have links to the rest of your large site?

[travelin cat]

We have a site that uses a cms, with forums etc. There are many links throughout the site to the various locations and articles.

We just jumped in to AdWords and have created our initial landing pages. We decided to make the landing pages self contained without any links to the main web site to help us track clicks better.

My question is should we have links to the main site so that visitors that click on our ads can see that we are in fact a large legitimate travel site that has been around for many years?

Or should we just continue to make the landing pages self contained?

[trannack]

I think that you might in fact get penalised for not having a navigation strucutre on your landing page. IE I believe, but could be wrong, that it is advisable to have links to at the very least the main structure elements of your site - ie home, sitemap, contact, privacy policy. For myself - I have some massive sites - and use adwords a reasonable amount - I have not been penalised for having navigation and links to other areas in my site on my landing pages. In fact I think it is apositive thing, and promotes better user experience.

[travelin cat]

We have in fact included links to our privacy policy, about us, about our product, a contact us link as well as links to the official industry web sites.

These pages are copies of the ones from the larger website that have been added to the "self contained" adwords landing age area.

I was just wondering if the landing pages had the main nav links that our main site has would improve conversion by letting the visitors see that we are a larger site, not just somebody looking to make a quick buck.

[trannack]

I would say definately yes. I can see no advantage for not having them, and plenty for.

The only time that I could imagine that this would be inappropriate is if you have adult material, pharmaceutical content, or other material on your site that could be deemed unsuitable for the audience you are targetting.

[Huligan]

I would have to disagree. It is fine to not include the website's navigation on the landing page. There is an advantage to not having it. The landing page is all about turning the click into a conversion. If you can funnel the visitor towards the conversion action, you are helping yourself. Sometimes (especially for large websites) the navigation provides an avenue for the visitor to leave the conversion opportunity. You don't want to mislead them, but you also don't want to overwhelm them with lots of options. Most visitors like using the home page as a navigation starting point, so feel free to provide a prominent link to the home page instead of including the full navigation.

Keep in mind you have to test and play with it. Each landing page decision should be unique to your product/service.

[edited by: eWhisper at 12:37 am (utc) on April 22, 2007]
[edit reason] Please don't drop links. See TOS. [/edit]