Landing page vs. squeeze page vs. splash page – what are they, and what sets them apart from each other? Do you need them for your website? The answer to the latter question is yes, yes and no. As you will discover by reading this article, you do need both a landing page and a squeeze page, while a splash page is completely unnecessary, contrary to popular opinion.
Landing Page
A landing page is simply where a visitor ‘lands’ after clicking on a link that directs him/her to your website. For example, if you advertise your bicycle store on Google, and someone clicks on it, the page they are redirected to is your landing page. If you used SEO and got an article about pillow cases to rank well and somebody clicked on it, they would be redirected to your pillow case article. Thus, your pillow case article would be a landing page. Note that their can be (and almost always will be) more than one landing page per website.
As a result, you will always have a landing page on your website, no matter what you do. Thus, it is an integral part of your website that is both necessary and cannot be removed.
Squeeze Page
If you are familiar with Internet marketing, then you probably also know that lists are a very important part of your overall plan. Without a list, your revenue will be much smaller than what it could be. Thus, it is essential that you have some method of extracting an e-mail address from a visitor ethically.
A squeeze page is simple the best way to do this. In a squeeze page, you provide a form for a visitor to enter in their e-mail address and their name (optional) in order for them to be able to subscribe to your blog/website. Alternatively, (and this works much better) you can also give a free gift, like an eBook or video tutorial as a reward when the visitor opts into your mailing list. A squeeze page is a vital part of the success of any online business.
Splash Page
A splash page is almost like the ‘homepage’ of a website. For example, if you were to type in an address into the URL bar, such as EzineArticles.com and you were redirected to a static page, that would be the homepage. A splash page is when the homepage is replaced with a page that draws attention to the middle of the page. For example, a video might be placed in the center, while the rest of the page is blank or has arrows pointing towards the center. This is a splash page.
With the recent algorithm updates, Google has shown that it does not favor websites with splash pages. They not only have longer loading times, but they also are not very user-friendly. I recommend not creating a splash page for your website(s).
The concepts behind these types of pages truly are quite simple. The first two, landing pages and squeeze pages, are essential to a business, while a splash page is not recommended.
