There are many ways out there to automate your landing page creation—but should you? We say no. While you can and probably should automate the process by which you actually receive your data, don’t leave the creation of your landing pages to the machines. Why? The most basic reason is because the machines aren’t always good at auditing your links. Linking is the biggest issue with automated landing page creation, and having links that do not work means that you have potential site visitors who will never actually make it to your website. Even the process by which you remove those links should not be automated.

More broadly, anything that is intended to help you bring more traffic to your website should not be automated. Just as you would never publish content that is written by a machine, you should also never rely on anything else that is automatically generated by softwares.

If this is the case, why do so many businesses still automate their landing page creation? The truth is because it is easy and hassle-free, despite the fact that those pages really do not serve the purpose they are meant to serve. It should also be mentioned that Google doesn’t really like these automatically generated doorway pages, as they are created specifically to rank for a keyword and rarely provide real value to the searcher. So, why shouldn’t you automate this process? Essentially two reasons: these pages rarely work the way they are supposed to work and these pages are bad for search engine optimization and conversion rates.

Functionality

One of the biggest complaints that users have about automated landing pages is that they are far less navigable than the normal pages of the website. Businesses generate them in order to extend their reach, but because the create of those pages is automated, the content on those pages is rarely tailored directly to the searchers need, the links there may not actually take the searcher to the information and, more importantly, products, that the searcher needed. There is simply no way for the automation system to create a page that is first, offers the same experience as the website itself and second, is guaranteed to be a good fit for the searcher’s query.

Losing functionality is one of the biggest issues with these pages, especially if the user actually does find something he wants to buy. Even if he eventually gets to the pay page, it is almost always undercut by intermediary pages, which provide him with plenty of opportunities to get confused, bored, frustrated, and distracted. These intermediary pages may be, however, necessary, because of the automation.

Because there is very little quality control when it comes to these automatically created landing pages (usually none, if we’re honest—a brand that doesn’t take the time to create specific landing pages for specific queries probably is also not taking the time to review the landing pages that are created automatically), this means that the links on Google and the pages themselves have an opportunity to become what can only be described as “a big mess.”

Does that mean that you are always going to see issues with automated landing pages? No. But in the majority of circumstances, the user experience and the level of information and relevance on these pages is going to be very low. And because it is going to be very low, these pages are actually not as great for search engine optimization as they were originally believed to be.

SEO

When it comes to search engine optimization, the last thing you want is to present site visitors with a landing page that does not actually fit the needs of their query. While the content and keyword optimization might initially earn you a high ranking for that page, the high bounce rate and low visit time is going to pull you down, anyway. Google and search engines like it prefer webpages that provide value, and they often measure how valuable webpages are by how much time their users spend on those webpages and whether or not they convert into a sale. The user experience and functionality issues associated with landing pages that have been automatically generated are going to make it unlikely that they are effective and therefore won’t really do much for your bottom line.

What to Do Instead

If you are interested in driving more traffic to your website, don’t look to these types of landing pages. Instead, start looking for opportunities to optimize your website for keywords where you know your website will provide value. Longtail search terms are a good place to start, but be sure only to pick terms for which your website really will be relevant to those who search those terms.