Lead pages are a highly effective yet controversial way to increase traffic from the top search engines.

A lead page is a single web page that is written (using all of the techniques discussed here) to emphasize only one or two key words. Usually, it is not even reachable by navigating the web page. Its sole purpose is to attract a visitor and then lead them to the rest of the Website.

They are effective because by concentrating with the promotion of a single word, it is easy to increase its relevance and ranking on most of the top search engines.

The keyword you are promoting should have relevance to your Website. If your company sells widgets, it would not be appropriate to create a lead page emphasizing doohickies. In fact, some of the search "bots" may be sufficiently clever to deduce that your site is not really about doohickies, and consequently penalize your search relevance for widgets (or even drop your site from indexing. Avoid problems, and don't play games with the tags.

If you use them, be sure that the style of the lead page follows the same style as the rest of your Website and that the rest of your site is accessible from the lead page. You don't want to go to the trouble of getting a visitor on your lead page and having them get stuck there with nowhere to go.


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