Landing Page Strategies for your Pay Per Click Campaign

When asking the question, why are landing pages so important to your pay per click campaign, consider this statistic –

“Web visitors spend just 8-seconds scanning your website landing page before they decide to leave.” – Anne Holland, Publisher of MarketingSherpa.com 

Combine the above concept with Google’s new landing page relevance policy and it is clear why Google Adwords advertisers should invest in landing page creation. 

The Google Landing Page Policy:

“We’ve also added some language to anticipate Google’s retrieval of advertiser landing pages. To further improve program quality, our system will soon visit and evaluate all landing pages specified in AdWords ads. The quality information collected will affect AdWords account performance in the future. If a landing page has informative content related to its AdWords ads and keywords, these keywords will receive higher Quality Scores and potentially lower minimum cost-per-click bid (CPC bid) requirements. Poor quality landing pages or those that restrict visits by our system are likely to experience a decrease in quality scores (and a potential increase in CPC bid requirements).”

Policies for a Good Landing Page:

The following is a list of some basic site-building philosophies which will better serve our paid search campaign. 

1. Provide relevant and substantial content

If a user doesn’t see the relevant information they are looking for within 8 seconds, they will become frustrated and ultimately leave the site. 

This will result in a low conversion rate and unhappy customers.  In general, build the landing page that provides substantial and useful information that elaborates on what was stated in the Adtext. 

If an advertiser is selling a product for sale online, ensure that the product is in a prominent location and the price is visible.  Should that product be subject to a discount or current sale price, ensure that the design highlights that fact. 

The language of the landing page should have the goal of sale or conversion in mind.  Stick to the product or service being offered, don’t bring in peripheral topics.

2. Forms, Forms and More Forms

Each landing page must have a “call to action” on the page.  This is extremely important for the PPC department to track the effectiveness of the ad and provide value to the customer. 

The form should be user friendly, simple and short, ensuring the user that it is easy to fill out in a minimal amount of time. 

Please ensure that we have also created a “Thank You” page that a user is directed to once a form has been completed.  The conversion tracking code will need to be inserted into this page to assist the Internet Marketing department in its tracking goals.

3. Easily Navigable Site

The key to turning visitors into customers is making it easy for users to find what they are looking for. 
• Therefore, we should ensure that there is an easy path for users to purchase product or sign up for more information
• No pop-ups or pop-unders
Why this is Important for our Clients

Google will be launching their “Ad Bot” which will operate the same way their “Page Rank Bot” does when determining your website rank.  The Ad Bot will scan a landing page and assess its content to determine if it is providing the user with the information promised in the ad.  If the landing page isn’t living up to the ad’s promises, then the ad will be assigned a lower quality score.  A lower quality score will negatively effect an ad’s position and thus it will cost the advertiser more to have their ad appear in a higher position. 

Some food for thought with Paid Search Landing Page Strategy!