It's a common misconception that the goal of your traffic-driving efforts should be to get visitors to your home page. And while getting people to your home page isn't a bad idea per se, getting them to targeted pages is even better. Let's explore the reasons why:
A landing page is defined as the page that people first arrive when they visit your website. So if they type in your web address and reach the home page, the home page is the landing page. But if they click on a link on another website and end up at one of your blog posts, then that blog post is the landing page.
From a technical perspective, a targeted landing page is no different than any other landing page. But when we are executing an SEO campaign, for example, the page that we want people to reach is called our "targeted landing page".
So if you are an office that accepts Delta Premier, we might create a page called "Delta Dental Premier". The goal of this targeted landing page would be for us to use SEO to drive visitors who enter the keyword "delta dental premiere dentist"
1) Your conversion rates will be higher when people can find the specific information they are looking for. So if someone is searching for "delta dental premier" they'd presumably be "happier" on your "Delta Dental" page as opposed to your home page, simply because the delta dental page "matches" their search query. On the home page they could navigate to your "Financial -> Delta Dental" page, but why not give them the information they want in the first place?
2) The more pages you have, the better your website will do in organic search listings. Consider the following example: you have a website where you have a single page that says "Insurance Information", and provides a list of all the insurance plans you accept: "Delta, Cigna, MetLife, etc.". Your competitor has a dedicated page for "Delta Dental", where all they discuss on that page is "Delta Dental". Now recall that one of Google's main goals is to make sure that when people do a search, that they are given the most relevant results. So ask yourself, which is the "best page" for someone to see when they are searching for "Delta Dental dentist" --- a) a page where "Delta Dental" is one of many insurance plans listed, or b) a page that's dedicated only to Delta Dental. Well the answer, of course, is b).
In summary, whereas it was (and sometimes still is) a common practice to drive all traffic to your website, the BEST practice is to "give the people what they want" -- and drive traffic to targeted landing pages which reflect the content of the visitors search.
