Do I need a landing page for my Google Ad Words campaigns?
Let’s just get it out there first. What the heck is a landing page? Simply put, a landing page is one web page, created specifically for a sole advertising purpose such as one ad, one campaign, one product, one promotion etc.
The decision to create seperate landing pages for your Google Ad Words campaigns will depend on a few things pertaining to you and your organization.
- What is your existing quality score within your campaigns?
- Do you have the time, and experience (or funds) to allocate to the development and management of landing pages?
- How heavily are you invested into Google Ad Words? Or, how heavily do you plan to be?
Creating seperate landing pages for your campaigns certainly increases your ROA on the Google Ad Words platform. They help to activley address quality score, click-thru-rate, bounce rate, converstion rate and user experience; all of which contribute to a profitable Google Ad Words campaign.
Don’t worry- if these terms seem overwhelming, don’t panic. We’ll break them down for you.
Quality Score in Google Ad Words Campaigns
When starting off in the world of Google Ad Words, or optimizing your existing campaigns, the quality score of your ad groups should be a high priority in your ad management. If your ads aren’t done correctly, Google will penalize you and lower your quality score. A lower quality score will result in your ad being shown less (or not at all) and your cost-per-click to rise.
What is a quality score?
Google scores your ad using the equation below:
Quality Score = click-thru-rate + ad relevance + landing page experience
Your landing page experience accounts for 40% of your quality score. That’s a lot!
There are two ways in which this portion of your quality score is calculated. Firstly, Google scans the page your ad redirects the user to and decides whether the information on said page matches both the ad, and the search term the user has provided. Secondly, Google measures how well people respond to the page your ad brings them to, and factors that into your quality score. Positive actions on your page will boost your score. Negative actions will do the opposite.
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So, how does quality score tie into landing pages for your Google Ads?
Targeted Landing Pages for Google Ad Words
By creating the most targeted and specific landing pages for your ads, you are ensuring that the landing page experience is as positive as possible for both Google and the search user. This helps to create and maintain a high quality score; increasing the exposure of your ads, decreasing the cost-per-click and boosting the overall ROA of your Google Ad Words campaigns.
Targeted landing pages help reduce bounce rate, increase conversion rate and influence user experience.
Landing pages help reduce bounce rates
An abundance of information online means that search users will not hesitate to leave a site immediatley if it does not instantly provide them with the answers they need. Studies show that a webpage has 10-20 seconds before a user has decided to stay or leave. When a search user clicks on a web page and leaves immediatley, this is considered a “bounce” and your bounce rate is indicative of how many users did not find your page useful to their needs.
Google doesn’t like high bounce rates, and will penalize you for them.
Landing pages that are directly related to the ad provided will be less likely to recieve a bounce- and in fact, more likely to receive a conversion!
Landing pages help increase conversion rates
A landing page that gives the search user exactly what they need is more likely to entice the user to perform a conversion- fill out the contact form, call your business or submit a quote request etc. Why would they search for something else when your ad has served them, and so has your landing page?
The development of landing pages
Just like the development of your core website, landing pages should be built around SEO best practices, strong framework and a great design. A good website developer will be able to build landing pages that not only support online ads, but also support user behavior. Think of landing pages as an extension of your website (and really, they should always link back to your core website anyway.)
Check out the best landing pages of 2019
But- are landing pages nessecary for Google Ad Words campaigns?
Landing pages truly are part of a well designed, profitable Google Ad Word campaign. They help support the fundamentals of running successful Google Ads, and help you gain a strong presence on the web, served through your ads.
There are times however, when developing landing pages may not be feasible for the point in which your business is at. To help support your Google Ad Words in a similar fashion, a well developed website can serve as a strong pillar for a landing page destination.
Working with a strong, reputable website developer will provide you with a site that has both the framework and content to help support your Google Ad Words campaigns. And what does a website built to support online advertising look like?
Well, that’s next week’s topic.
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