SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

September 21, 2011By Jill Whalen

Hi Jill,

My client has a website that sells only a few products; however, the product line fits two very separate, entirely different vertical markets ? the restaurant industry and printing companies.

In order to separate the two from one another so that the printer people and the restaurant people clearly know what to do when they hit the site, I thought I'd create a splash page to direct the two disparate industries. This is done very well with the splash page on the Esprit website.

From there, I'd make an SEO'ed home page for the restaurants and one for the printers, but keep the home page splash page as a clear optional choice of which direction to go.

Can this sort of splash page be used effectively to separate two targets without inhibiting the SEO?

Any insight you would provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Debi

++Jill's Response++

Hi Debi,

I'd never recommend a splash page that didn't have indexable content. What I would typically recommend (and this is without knowing any details other than what you sent me) is that you provide information on the home page about the company and its products in general, and then describe the two different target audience segments that they sell to. Within each blurb of information for the specific segment, you'd link to the section of the site specifically for that segment for more information.

While it's an old article, my friend Karon Thackston explains a bit more here. Most of that article is applicable, but the main part I'm talking about is the paragraph "Segmenting on the Web."

Hope this helps!

Best,

Jill

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Labels: Different, Markets, Target