Welcome to lesson 4 – Landing page optimisation for PPC
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page on your website that the searcher is sent to once they click on the Search Engine listing/Advert.
Creating a Good Landing Page
As mentioned on our last lesson every aspect of your campaign is important and the landing page is no exception. Not only will a good landing page improve your enquiry/sales rate but it can also lead to saving you money via a lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC) because it is one of the key component in the calculation of your Google Quality Score.
Landing Page Example
It makes sense to show a good landing page then explain the different factors involved. From the screen shot below you can see that this website has:
- Good call to action (at the top, left and right of the page) offering visitors a variety of ways to contact the company;
- Trust/Confidence with rolling Features Testimonials on the left side;
- Selling points (FREE ADVICE in the blue text and promoting that they are available 24/7);
- Use of the phrase Employment Law which is the main keyword for the campaign;
- Use of bright bold images and text to attract visitors to the calls to action.
Factors To Consider When Creating A Good Landing Page
There are a few main factors to be considered when creating a landing page.
Relevance
How relevant is your page to what the searcher has typed in? Your landing page should be as relevant to what the searcher typed in as possible and include unique high quality content. Time after time we see PPC Ads that link to the homepage when selling a specific product or service which is obviously not good. When you chose a landing page for an Ad think of the searcher. If Windows PC is typed in make sure that the landing page is optimised for Windows PC’s. When creating landing pages for PPC we recommend following the same optimisations techniques as you would for On page SEO.
Landing pages need to be both relevant to the Ad and the keyphrase. Something that is always forgotten in PPC is that selling points that were included on the Ad should also be included on the landing page. For example: If your Ad includes a 20% discount notice then this selling point should be included on a prominent place on the landing page.
When creating landing pages think of what you want the visitor to do when they get there. For example: If you want the visitor to buy something don’t send them to a review page, send them to the product or relevant category page.
Trust
The majority of people will decide whether they trust your website within the first 5 seconds of their visit so make sure you have a trustworthy design complimented with good rich content. The best question you can ask yourself when doing this is: Would I give my credit card details to this website?
You can give people confidence in both your website and company at the same time by including a variety of features including trusted logos, selling points, testimonials etc. There are a wide range of trusted logos that can be used starting with the different payment types you accept to online accreditations and industry standards. Both standard selling points such as UK Delivery, Price comparison/Best Price Guaranteed etc.. and unique selling points should be included in prominent places on the landing pages.
Call To Action
Think about what you would like the searcher to do when they visit your landing page. For example: If you want people to buy products from your website have this option/button in a relevant place on the page and make it highly visible. There have been many occasions when we have seen Buy Now buttons placed below the scroll on a page or as basic hard to see text on a page. Ensure you have bright bold well placed call to action on a page to ensure your visitors do not miss the obvious focus of the page.
It is also good practice to have an easy to see telephone number at the top of every page and contact links to that people can easily contact you.
More information on what Google expects can be viewed on the Google Landing Page Guidelines.
