One thing you’ll hear talked about a lot in the world of PPC is your landing page. A landing page has the ability to make or break your paid marketing efforts so getting it right is of the upmost importance.
It doesn’t matter how good your AdWords account is; how well structured it is, how tightly themed your ad groups are, how well you’ve mastered match types or how amazing your ad copy is, if you don’t have a relevant, quality landing page you won’t achieve those oh so important conversions.
The landing page, keywords and content of your ad texts all need to work together to increase relevancy. The more relevant all these factors are to each other and to the search phrase the user has typed into the search engine, the higher your Quality Score. The higher your Quality Score the less your average CPC (cost per click) and the more profitable your AdWords account becomes.
Your landing page should give customers what they asked for. They typed a keyphrase into the search engine, it triggered your ad and because the ad promised them what they were looking for, they clicked it. If when they land on your page, the messaging is totally different they will bounce right back to the search results. This is a waste of a click for you and it’s a bad user experience for the customer.
The landing page of your PPC ads could well be the first time a customer sees your website – it can be the very first introduction to your brand and you want to make a good impression.
A landing page should be clear, concise and easy to navigate. You don’t want users to feel trapped when they land on your page. If they can’t see a clear path to move through your website, then they will simply press the back button on their browser and return to the search results. You also don’t want to be writing reams and reams of content for your landing page. People in general don’t like reading lots of text online and this is particularly true of AdWords users. They’ve searched for what they want, they’ve clicked the most relevant ad and now they want to get on and complete the action or conversion they want.
Never be tempted to create a landing page and then steal some content from one of your other website pages. Each landing page you create should be unique. Unique landing pages mean a better user experience for your visitors and they improve the overall quality of your website.
Calls to action should reflect the messaging of your ads and be immediately visible to people landing on the page. Some webmasters try increasing the text size or changing the colour of the call to action to try and increase conversion rate. You can also try using encouraging words like ‘Now’ or ‘Today’. You also want to ensure that your contact information is easy to see anywhere on the landing page.
These two elements; a landing page that matches the content of your ad and that is also easy to navigate with clear calls to action will build a level of trust with you and the customer. Trust between a brand and their customers is so important – especially when that customer is visiting your website for the first time.
Finally, always make sure to run variations of your landing page. As we know testing and experimentation is what AdWords is all about and the creation of landing pages is no different. Test out different calls to action, different layouts, different content, different colours etc. etc. Sometimes even the smallest of tweaks can lead to a massive upturn in conversion rate.
With over 17 years of continuous experience of managing Google Ads campaigns, Laura is responsible for the setting up, optimising and management of Google Ads campaigns for Tiger Eye's clients.