Tips on AdWords Landing Page Optimization

I just took on a new client for AdWords management, and had a call today with their SEO guy since he’s the one who can make necessary changes to their landing pages.

One of the biggest problems in their account is a lot of very low Quality Scores, that are the result of poor landing page optimization. Having said that, we did find one landing page that is converting extremely well and is getting decent – but not great – quality scores. With that in mind, we’re running with that page for all campaigns temporarily, until new ones can be built out.

Today, I got on the phone with the SEO guy/web designer and we discussed ways to improve the page even further, not only to increase Quality Score but to increase conversions as well.

And the conclusion of the call was very simple: AdWords landing page optimization should be done with a view toward conversion and an SEO-related mindset. The issues we found were so obvious yet so simple that I decided to post them here on my AdWords blog.

When you consider AdWords policies such as Quality Score, they are in place with one main goal: To improve the end-user’s experience. As long as AdWords end-users have good experiences with the sites they visit, they will continue to click on ads, which is a win-win for everyone: Google makes money and we all get higher CTRs and more traffic.

So, as you consider what goes into the process of optimizing landing pages, here are some takeaways from today’s call:

• SEO Mindset. The first thing I noticed that was wrong with the page’s relevancy was that the title tag simply contained the company name, which has zero relevancy to the specific ad groups that are pointing to that page. So the first thing I gave the client’s webmaster was a new title tag containing relevant keyword phrases.
• Conversion Mindset. In looking for ways to make the page more relevant from an SEO/Quality Score point of view,  I immediately saw that it was lacking in content. Sure, the page converted well, but the AdWords algorithm isn’t seeing enough content on the page that’s relevant to the keyword groups and the ad copy. WIth that in mind, I thought about what kind of content would be best, and guess what I came up with? Testimonials! I instructed him to add a large number of testimonials “below the fold” since they would not only improve relevancy in terms of what AdWords sees, but will also drive up conversion rate.

  In addition, the company has an A+ rating with the BBB and has this advertised on their home page, but it was conspicuously absent from the PPC landing page, so I instructed him to add that as well. While it will probably have no effect on Quality Score, this is going to have a huge effect on conversions.

Remember, AdWords judges pages in terms of end-user experience, which means you should think about the pages as an end-user would. That means landing page optimization is all about what’s going to convert best while still remaining highly relevant to the keywords and ads pointing to that page.