Important Landing Page Quality Score Myths For PPC

Your landing page quality affects your AdWords quality score and quality score has a huge impact on the achievement of an AdWords account. So, it’s significant to separate the fact from the fiction about what affects landing page quality score, and to understand what you can do to improve your landing page.

Keyword on the landing page

Include specific keywords that directly relate to the specific subject of your ad group and landing page. For best ad visibility, include relevant keyword variations, along with singular and plural versions. If applicable, think using colloquial terms, alternate spellings, synonyms, and product or serial numbers.

Adding a privacy policy

If your site doe not collect any personal information, then you do not need a privacy policy. However, if you have personal information, such as an email address, phone number, or credit card, having a privacy policy will facilitate your quality score.

One of the quality score strategy is transparency. Your privacy policy may say that you will sell any information given to you to the maximum bidder. However, the details you put that into your Privacy Policy means you were transparent to the user on what would happen to their personal information.

Adding an ‘about us’ page

This is a good practice from a user standpoint, it is not a complete must. As above, the definite AdWords guideline is to be transparent to the user. However, it is a good practice as this could very easily be supplementary to the landing page quality score formula and being transparent to users about your business is very much inline with Google’s goals.

Microsites and dedicated landing

Google does wish a user to have choices, you can simply build a page that showcases a single product or service while still giving the user navigational choices. While microsites or one-page-wonder sites have taken some quality score hits over the past couple years, dedicated landing pages are still successful.

PageRank

PageRank is stored at the page level and not the website level. Google has a completely dissimilar bot and algorithm for PageRank versus landing page quality score. While both ads-bot and Googlebot may share some data, the way the data is in reality processed is separate and for entirely different purposes. A brand new site can do well in PPC. A site that is excluded from the organic SERPs can do well in PPC. A site banned from PPC can do well in the organic SERPs. Landing page quality and natural search rankings are totally unrelated to each other.

Load Time

Google only looks at how long it takes the page’s HTML to load in influencing landing page load times. If your site is loading so gradually that you see a problem with load times in your AdWords account, you have larger issues with your site. Just loading a page’s HTML should be extremely quick. It should be noted, Google has said they may ultimately incorporate all page elements into the load time for determining quality score. If this happens, you must optimize your images, scripts, and other called files.

Seven Common Mistakes In PPC That Make Web Marketers Fail

Bidding Broad

When setting up your campaign you need to be very careful and need to be fast. Every industry has their huge list of keywords that drive them with the most traffic but there is many more distinction of keywords that are being searched when you focus on “long tail keywords”, the less you’re going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranking higher if the keyword is closely matched. Expand your keyword list by just looking at your own web statistics for exact keyword variations people use to search for your product.

Avoiding Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting within a PPC search engine means that you are limiting the range of your advertising reach to a specific physical location. The search engines recognize each searcher’s IP address and can then deliver ads designated for their location. It’s just a psychological thing. .Google and other search engines permit you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. PPC geo-targeting lets you target two types of searchers first the searcher who is within a given location looking for a general keyword and then the searcher who is searching with a geographic location integrated in the search query.

You will certainly get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC. Furthermore from the beginning, your visitor will know that you “recognize” their location.

Losing Relevance on Landing Page

Effective landing pages are the means to converting customers through paid search. Generally the structure of your landing page should match up with that of the banner, the ad or the link they clicked on to get them on that point. For example, if your pay-per-click ad is targeting PPC articles, your landing page needs to talk about exactly that.

Using Telephone Numbers

Using a telephone number within your PPC ad is an eye catcher and nothing more than that. Many people will want to look at your services on a website, not phone you about them straight away so be sure that the majority of your users will not call instead of clicking. You’re wasting valuable ad space that could instead be used to draw customers in. Even if you do manage to get people to phone you and not click on your ad then you will lower the CTR on those ads causing a lower quality score and worse positions at a higher cost

Avoiding Brand Name Keywords

Buying your name as keywords in PPC will give you an immediate presence in search results for these words, and will give your company valuable exposure. You may also be trailing out to direct competitors who are purchasing your name as a keyword, and are building up their own brands as a result of this strategy. Competitors may be bidding on your brand name and stealing your traffic.

Paying for Negative Keywords

It’s most significant to the customer however that the traffic you drive to their site is qualified, and not people who are just browsing. Driving more eligible traffic should decrease your spend and your cost per conversion while increasing your ROI. Negative keywords can help weed out unwanted or expensive traffic that aren’t yet ready to convert. Be sure to use that “negative keyword folder” to get rid of these insignificant clicks.

Not Using Keywords in Ad Text

Your ad text is one of the most significant aspects of your PPC account. A big mistake is when people focus more on their keyword bids than their ad text of an ad group. Be sure to incorporate one or more of your keywords within your ad text and include a call-to-action. A good call-to-action will guide the client in the right direction once they enter your site.