As summer comes to an end my thoughts wander to autumn which then ultimately wanders to the Philadelphia Arctic Tundra that is winter. I’m a planner so I start shopping for my winter jacket in August so I can walk with comfort from my car to the office while my other unprepared co-workers talk about how freezing it is on the first day Mother Nature decides to drop below 60 degrees. Google is first line of defense when searching for the right type of winter jacket to buy. This, in turn has inspired me to write the next post in our Mastering PPC series, about the importance of Landing Pages in Search.
I searched for “Winter Jackets” and clicked on the first ad I saw. It brought me to a page entitled the “Fall 2013 Collection.”
Reason #1 Why Landing Pages are important: This is your time to make it as easy as possible on the user. Tailor your page to speak to their needs whether that is in copy or content. Think about the keywords that you’re matching with this landing page and ask yourself, “Is this entirely relevant?” If the answer is no, build another page or don’t bid on those keywords. This is your time to make your brand and offer look as appealing as can be. Use it to your advantage!
So I went back and clicked on the next ad to continue searching.
This time I was subjected to the most common mistake search ads make; sending every ad to the homepage. In some cases on Branded terms, that’s entirely acceptable and most times suggested by your agency. But with a more specific search, you should be creating a more specific landing page. Which brings me to my next point;
Reason #2 Why Landing Pages are Important: You’re able to control what your users see. Mimizing visitor straying by creating more focused content is ultimately best practice. In this situation, dropping them on the homepage doesn’t provide the user directly what they need, instead they’re forced to click around and find what they searched for which can cause the user to bounce prematurely therefore leaving you with one less conversion.
So again, I went back and clicked on the next ad to continue searching.
This time I was brought to a page for Children’s Rain Jackets. Reason #3 Why Landing Pages are important: You’re going to pay less. It’s not a secret that Google wants to the fastest most reliable search engine for its customers. Therefore the more relevant your landing page is to your ad and the more your ad is relevant to the keyword; the less money you’re going to have to pay per click *Hint: It’s all about Quality Score… Check out next week’s blog post for more info*
In my time thus far working in Paid Search, I can almost guarantee that this company pays more per click than the company that sends users directly to a page filled with winter jackets. So, if nothing else, having a more tailored landing page will cut down on ad spend, which increases your ROI and makes you happy but also keeps your quality score high which, makes Google happy. Everyone wins.
I decided to go back and click on one more ad to see if I could try my luck.
Finally! This landing page is perfect for a user looking for Winter Jackets. In one quick click, I could put the Micro-Term Hooded Jacket in my shopping cart and check out all less than 5 minutes. The page is clear, concise, and doesn’t answer questions that I didn’t ask. It was tailored to my search and needs. This landing page got me to buy without any hurtles and outlined a conversion path directly and boldly. If you’re running search campaigns the key is relevancy in landing pages! What best practices do you follow when developing landing pages?
