Free PPC Advice

[Ad Republic]

Any questions on anything PPC related - fire away!

 

[realitybytes]

From your point of view (not what Google say) which basic elements do you look to improve on when your landing page quality seems to be faltering?

What I'm getting at is I grade really well for my sites landing page experience when I check the main elements against Google's to do list, however I still get a poor landing page experience on a lot of keywords.

What is your rule of thumb when it comes to a landing page quality checklist?

 

[Rich Best]

• Meta Title : make sure you have a meta title, and make sure it is aligned to your Ad Group keyword(s).
• H1 heading on page : make sure you have an h1 heading, and make sure it is aligned to your Ad Group keyword(s).
• Landing Page Text : make sure you have text (not in images) on your landing page, and make sure it is aligned to your Ad Group keyword(s).
• Page load speed : make sure your landing page loads fast.
• Mobile optimised : make sure your landing page is mobile optimised if you are targeting mobile devices at all.
• Optimised URL : a landing page with a keyword rich URL will help your QS.

Note - you should avoid having too many keywords per Ad Group - as by it's very nature, your Ad Groups then becomes less targeted in respect to your landing page.

In an ideal world, 1 keyword is served by 1 highly targeted / relevant Advert which leads to 1 highly relevant / optimised Landing Page.

I wrote about the importance of relevancy in PPC here.

Hope this helps?

RB

 

[Ad Republic]

From your point of view (not what Google say) which basic elements do you look to improve on when your landing page quality seems to be faltering?

What I'm getting at is I grade really well for my sites landing page experience when I check the main elements against Google's to do list, however I still get a poor landing page experience on a lot of keywords.

What is your rule of thumb when it comes to a landing page quality checklist?

Interesting question, because although you can follow everything Google tells you to do, you can still experience a 'poor landing page experience'.

For me, this isn't about keywords on the page and all the nitty-gritty. This is about a much broader disconnect between what someone is expecting to see (when they click on your ads), and what you're actually delivering.

You can get all the technical stuff right, but if people are leaving soon after they click - you'll be slapped with the 'poor landing page experience' tag.

Do you know the bounce rate of your site?

I appreciate you want a checklist of things to tick off, so here's some ideas to lessen the disconnect:

1) Use a strong headline on the page, that speaks to your customer on an emotive level. Understand what makes them tick, and play on it.

e.g. Local Pizza Delivery vs Mouth-Watering Pizza's, Delivered to Your Door

2) Use interesting and clever imagery - anything that says what you're about without having to actually say it is great

3) Have a look at the text on your landing page again. Is it all about you (the business) or is it about the customer. People want to know 'what's in it for me?' - so tell them.

Here are some other cool tools you can try:

- Visual Website Optimizer - to split test your landing pages
- Ten Scores - a great tool to track and improve your Quality Score


Hope this helps!

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Prior to this thread, were posters charging money to reply to PPC questions?

 

[realitybytes]

Thank you for both detailed analysis of your knowledge and experience, very much appreciated.

Everything you have mentioned I do, so I'm glad that I'm ticking all the right boxes but it's frustrating to follow all the regulated guidelines and still not achieve the goal of a decent landing page.

My pages still convert pretty well, so it tells me people like the page... even though G give me a poor landing page experience, but obviously my overall quality score is lower as a result, so I'm paying more, which is annoying

I guess Google just wants to give me a mark down based on how competitive the keywords are and the fact i'm not prepared to pay the silly money other companies are

 

[Breaking Good]

Thank you for both detailed analysis of your knowledge and experience, very much appreciated.

Everything you have mentioned I do, so I'm glad that I'm ticking all the right boxes but it's frustrating to follow all the regulated guidelines and still not achieve the goal of a decent landing page.

My pages still convert pretty well, so it tells me people like the page... even though G give me a poor landing page experience, but obviously my overall quality score is lower as a result, so I'm paying more, which is annoying

I guess Google just wants to give me a mark down based on how competitive the keywords are and the fact i'm not prepared to pay the silly money other companies are

I'm in a similar boat here. A lot of our keywords have "below average" landing page scores despite seemingly checking off every list we can find. I'm searching for what might be wrong but to no avail. I did a bit of testing with a keyword by intentionally putting it in a generic product listing page. For e.g if the search was "red shoes" the user would land on the "shoes" page of the site. I did this to see what the quality score would settle at. Quality score was steady at 5

Last week, we kept everything the same but changed it to a new landing page which was the product page as opposed to the menu. i.e the "red shoes" page. This page mostly ticked all the points noted in the posts above. Page copy similar to ad text and keyword etc etc. So I was expecting it to increase quality score but it went from 5 to 4!

It leads me to believe there must be something fundamentally wrong with our product landing pages for it to drop when, in fact, it should in theory go up. Does anyone have any generic advice on what would be the main things to test on this page?

 

[Ad Republic]

I'm in a similar boat here. A lot of our keywords have "below average" landing page scores despite seemingly checking off every list we can find. I'm searching for what might be wrong but to no avail. I did a bit of testing with a keyword by intentionally putting it in a generic product listing page. For e.g if the search was "red shoes" the user would land on the "shoes" page of the site. I did this to see what the quality score would settle at. Quality score was steady at 5

Last week, we kept everything the same but changed it to a new landing page which was the product page as opposed to the menu. i.e the "red shoes" page. This page mostly ticked all the points noted in the posts above. Page copy similar to ad text and keyword etc etc. So I was expecting it to increase quality score but it went from 5 to 4!

It leads me to believe there must be something fundamentally wrong with our product landing pages for it to drop when, in fact, it should in theory go up. Does anyone have any generic advice on what would be the main things to test on this page?

I think it's important to mention here that about 70% of what makes up your Quality Score is CTR. If you change the Destination URL of your existing ads (instead of creating new Ads for the new URL) you will lose the good data that you've built up (which is another factor Google looks at for measuring your Quality Score). I'm not saying you've done this, but just a warning!

A Quality Score of 5 is acceptable. Personally, I'd spend more time on improving your CTRs, as this will have a much more substantial impact on your Quality Scores.

However, something worth looking at would be your landing page experience on Mobile. Mobile traffic is growing, and in many accounts now overtakes Desktop traffic. Make such your site is mobile friendly, and the user-experience is as simple and slick as possible.

 

[realitybytes]

If you change the Destination URL of your existing ads (instead of creating new Ads for the new URL) you will lose the good data that you've built up (which is another factor Google looks at for measuring your Quality Score)

I see they are changing this now though, with the new "final URL"... so it allows you to change your destination URL without effecting/re-setting your historic data.

 

[Ad Republic]

I see they are changing this now though, with the new "final URL"... so it allows you to change your destination URL without effecting/re-setting your historic data.

Yes, it's a nice feature which automatically comes into play later this year. You could upgrade manually now though.

 

[Amber Raza]

Is adwords right for my business? Please Reply Me.

 

[AllUpHere]

Is adwords right for my business? Please Reply Me.

No, or yes. Take your pick.