PPC Quality Score and Improving Your Conversions
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I recently had a conversation with someone who was looking to get a PPC campaign going and wanted to know the costs, as if costs were the only consideration for planning an effective PPC campaign.
What I told him came as a surprise to him and is a prime reason why sometimes you should leave a job up to the professionals who do this every day. As much as Google wants its customers to be better educated, it is not Google’s job to tell them everything they need to know to get the advantage over their competition.
Getting a high placement in the sponsored PPC listings is not a matter of paying the most for a given keyword. You get the highest rankings by having the highest quality score.
So how do you get a high quality score, or a better first question to ask is what drives the quality score? Quality score is effected by all of the following:
- top quality ad text that gets visitors clicking on the ads
- a homepage with content that is relevant to the keyword that was searched
- the amount you are willing to pay per click
What I believe is the most under rated element in an effective pay per click campaign is the ‘landing page.’
What is so special about a Landing Page? Consider the following items.
A Landing Page…
1. focuses on specific keywords which attracts the right market to you.
2. keeps away the wrong market (or non-conversion visitors).
3. allows you to reach deeper into your market.
4. allows your click through rate to go higher because of your keyword and landing page strategy which in turn allows you to bid less on the same keywords as your competitor.
5. gets you better placement in the sponsored rankings (i.e.: top shaded areas on the left and on the right - while competitors pay more and are beneath you).
6. gets your visitors to take specific actions designed around specific keywords that your home page cannot possibly do (no matter how good it is).
7. has ‘Calls to Action’ that are very specific because of the direct search query. The home page has more responsibility than just focusing on individual keywords.
8. that is focused on specific keywords in turn will bring your conversion up as well from more qualified visitors coming to your site, and to an investor, makes your numbers look better.
If these don’t hit it home for you, then I can’t say anything more.
The only question I have left for the clients I consult with is, how badly do you want that high quality score?
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Good job Isaac. There are many things that effect website conversion but I have to agree that where you send your visitors is the single biggest thing you can do to effect the buyer behavious and lead generation that each site is after. Nice post dude!
DJ,
I haven’t heard this anywhere, and I know it to be true.
People will brand you in a negative, neutral (in effect, negative - because you don’t stand out) or positive way.
If your website is the window to your business, why not tailor the image you want to project? Don’t give them the chance to brand you as unprofessional because your site looks like it was created by your nephew.
In many cases, your Landing Page will be the receptionist. Your credibility and reputation may depend on it.
Imagine spending months going after a prospect. You are this close to closing them…and then they see your website. Your site could be what seals the deal or loses it for you.
This also applies to your profile on Facebook. It has the same effect, only not as direct. It can be more sinister because of the viral effect it can have.
Also, what I mentioned earlier about investors looking at your site… most people don’t look at their site in monetary terms of investment.
They tend to get ‘busy’ and plot along. They invest countless man-hours or maybe hardly any. But in either case, don’t log what their time is worth on a spreadsheet. This is a mistake.
If you don’t track the investment, you can’t assess whether the conversions were worth it or not or how to get the conversions up with less effort.
Hey Isaac,
Great post and some very valid points about landing pages at the end there. I’ve been doing some research (more accidental than intentional - I don’t really have time for research!) on Quality Scores and I’ve found in a number of tests that (contrary to my own presumption) the keyword that you are working on to achieve a 10/10 does not need to be present in the landing page. I’ve explained one such case over at my website and its really quite interesting to disect at least one way to obtain a perfect 10. I didn’t do all the things you’d ‘expect’ to see affect Quality Score so it makes for an interesting read, with one or two surprising factors.