Sincere question -- how do you programatically create 900 pages that aren't crap? I often advise the multiple, targeted landing page strategy, but I've always considered the best performance to be carefully considered pages with crisp copy that should at least be reasonably performant, and then test the hell out of those pages to try and boost them.
I've seen the programatically generated 'query-catcher' pages that the big boys use and have always dismissed them as effective (because they don't work on me). Am I completely missing the boat somewhere or is there some intersection I've yet to discover?
There are many people in the world who a) don't even know what a landing page is, b) hypothetically, if they knew they were at a landing page, would not be able to tell if it was programatically generated and c) if they knew it was programatically generated, still would not care. All they knew is the Googles had the exact answer to their question. Thanks Googles!
More broadly, "My behavior is not a good proxy for the behavior of all people everywhere." and "I may be smarter than substantially everyone in my industry but that is not the way I should bet." are two lessons to learn early and well.
Heh. To the contrary, I was betting that if my simple-old self saw what was up, then so would everyone.
Thanks for the head's up though. I'm still all for the careful crafting of landing pages, but at least I know I wouldn't be wasting my time to script out a bunch to at least put up until / unless they can be replaced or upgraded.
I would advise a mix of both strategies. Auto-generated content can allow you to test a large number of keywords/niches, and you can go to town creating better versions by hand once something has proven itself to actually be worth the effort.
I don't suppose we could persuade you to link one or two of those programatically generated LPs, could we? I'd be really interested to see how you're doing what you're doing.
I've seen the programatically generated 'query-catcher' pages that the big boys use and have always dismissed them as effective (because they don't work on me). Am I completely missing the boat somewhere or is there some intersection I've yet to discover?