In my last post,
4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Google AdWords Campaigns, I emphasized the value of optimizing landing pages to get the most out of your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns. This is a topic that warrants further discussion. After all, the point where a Web site visitor reaches the landing page is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where the visitor makes the decision to convert. Or at least consider the idea of converting…and convert at a later time.
1) Be Relevant
There should be a seamless relationship between the keyword, ad text, and landing page. In other words, the keyword should appear in the ad copy and landing page copy. There are two reasons for this. The first – Google’s quality score algorithm. Having relevant keywords on the landing page won’t necessarily boost your quality score, but not having relevant keywords could potentially hurt your quality score. The second and more important reason is that a visitor is more likely to take action if the landing page relates to what they were searching for in the first place. Plus if your landing page isn't relevant to the keyword or your text ad, you’re violating visitors' trust.
2) Conversion before Creativity
The main goal of your SEM campaigns is probably purchases, newsletter sign-ups, white paper downloads etc. If you want to go to town with a flashy landing page design or slick video, make sure the motivation is boosting conversions, not being creative for the sake of being creative. You don’t want your flashy video to distract people from the task at hand (i.e. taking action). If you want to test the impact of a creative element, the search engines make it easy to test your pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Simply run one PPC ad twice using two destination URLs and evaluate the data.
Every element on your SEM landing page should be there with the purpose of motivating searchers to take a desired action. If the content on the page isn’t helping, it’s hurting. Also, don't use too many links. It’s fine for a landing page to have a link to a home page, but multiple links to your Web site are unnecessary…unless they are all part of the conversion process. Also, strive to have as few form fields as possible on the landing page. Only ask for the bare essentials like name, email address, etc.
NetFlix’s landing pages always impress me. One thing you’ll notice is that even though there are links to the “About Us”, “Careers”, “Contact Us” pages, etc. they are below the fold and understated. Clearly the "1 Month Free Trial" is the top priority, not employee recruitment.
Make sure to use your landing page as a way to build your email marketing subscriber list. Consider having a check box on the landing page form to begin the email opt-in process. You may want to test the impact of having the email opt-in form on the landing page or perhaps another page further along in the conversion flow. Like everything in search marketing, test test test.
