A lot of components go into running a high-converting and low-cost Google AdWords campaign: you need to choose the right keywords; you need to create captivating ads; you need to bid the right amount.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, it can get a bit overwhelming figuring out where to start in order to maximize your ad spend. But more often than not, as an Agency with PPC management services, we like to start with our landing pages.
The relevancy and quality of your landing pages directly affects your Quality Score, which, in turn, impacts your cost-per-click (CPC). Optimizing your landing pages can help you save money and improve your conversion rates, so without further delay, let’s outline 5 of the best ways to optimize your landing pages.
1. Focus on relevancy
How important is your Quality Score? Well, accounts with quality scores of 6 or higher are granted a 16-50% decrease in CPC, while accounts with a 4 or lower Quality Score see a 25-400% increase in CPC.
The relevancy of your landing pages has proven to directly impact this important score. So, how do you increase landing page relevancy? The key here is to understand the intent.
Not every keyword has the same intent. In fact, there are generally three categories of intent that your keywords can be separated into:
- Informational Keywords (searches performed to answer questions or learn something) – What is XYZ?
- Commercial Investigation Keywords (searches performed to research a product or service) – XYZ vs. ABC
- Transactional Keywords (searches performed to buy something)– Buy XYZ
When you group your keywords into these three categories, you can then create ads and landing pages adapted to these intents, and thus, increase your Quality Score.
Here’s an example: Someone searches for “best DSLR cameras in 2017.” The intent of this query falls into commercial investigation, meaning you can create a landing page that features an ebook about the best DSLR cameras. The landing page should educate, not sell, thus matching the searcher’s intent.
2. Focus on the audience
Make sure your landing page copy is all about your audience if you’re optimizing a PPC for a franchise. In other words, use the type of language they’d use; talk about what they care about. Your prospects don’t care about what you’re selling. They care about finding a solution to a problem they face.
Show them you understand that.
An effective way to do this is to make your readers feel something, such as sadness, awe, anger, and so on. You can do this successfully by talking about a problem that you know your readers are facing. This will catch their attention.
From there, you have to make them interested in what you have to say – which can get a bit tricky. We suggest following the PAS formula, or Problem, Agitate, and Solution:
- Highlight the problem of your visitors (to catch their attention)
- Then, agitate the problem (so that your visitors become interested in what you have to say)
- Finally, show a solution to that problem (at this point, if your readers have a problem and like your solution, they’ll be far more likely to convert)
3. Remain focused on a singular topic
Our digital marketing company often finds clients wanting to attract as many prospects as possible by filling their landing pages with too much information. But this results in your visitors having to guess what they have to do on your pages.
The most successful landing pages focus on one thing only. One problem, one solution, one unique value proposition, and one goal.
You should do the same.
4. Add trust to your landing pages
Asking a visitor to convert means asking them to place trust in your product or service, as well as your company. Make it easier for them to trust you by sharing a backstory on your company. Tell them who you are, what you do, and where you do it from, all while remembering that succinct messaging is the best.
Then, add social proof. Awards, testimonials, ratings, security badges, press mentions and more can all be peppered cleverly on your landing page to demonstrate your value and reputation, without stealing away the spotlight from your proposition.
5. Speed matters
Even if you do everything right with your landing page, if your users can’t see the page because it doesn’t load, then you might as well kiss those visitors goodbye.
How do you improve your page speed? You can put your landing page on a speed tool like Pingdom or Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Google’s tool will tell you how to solve the issues that slow down your page, while Pingdom’s tool will offer some pretty technical analysis.
Some of the common issues impacting your landing page’s speed include:
- Large images, which is why you should compress all images (TinyPNG is a good tool to use) before uploading them to your site.
- CSS and JavaScript files. Programmers often leave many spaces and comments while coding. You’ll want to minify your code and files to reduce their size by eliminating white spaces, characters, and comments.
- Lack of browser caching. Make sure you leverage your browser caching, so that the next time your visitors land on your page, their browser will use your page’s static elements in stored in their memory.
Get on a path toward optimal PPC campaigns
Our digital marketing company knows that there’s a lot of advertising work involved when increasing the performance of your landing pages. Improving relevancy, optimizing your copy, reigning in your focus, making them trustworthy, and increasing their speed takes a lot of work.
But these tweaks and optimizations will certainly increase your landing page’s quality score and, in turn, lower your AdWords costs. Give it a try with at least one of your landing pages and take note of the changes you see with your cost-per-click.