Pay Per Click – Getting Started

You did your homework, created your ads, set-up a campaign or two, created some ad groups with a tight set of relevant keywords, crafted your ads, set-up your daily budget, set your max bid per keyword and even threw is some negative keywords then sent the traffic to your home page. Sounds like you’re ready to start your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign doesn’t it? If you do you’d be wrong! In most cases, sending the traffic to your home page is the worst thing you can possibly do.

When the Home Page Might Work as a Landing Page

Say you’ve just invented a backyard sprinkler like no other, saving time, water, money and this is the only product you have. Okay, you have it in different colors and maybe a few different sizes but basically a single product. If your home page is completely optimized with quality targeted text, nice product images, clear differentiators  (what makes your product better than other offerings) and a clear, concise, compelling call-to-action it might be okay to use the home page as your PPC landing page. Depending on how many different keywords people use to search for a sprinkler the home page may not be the optimal choice even with such a limited product offering. Consider these possible terms, “Garden Sprinkler”, “Lawn Sprinkler”, “Sprinkler Heads”, “Irrigation Sprinkler” and “Spray Nozzle” or “Drip System”. The first three you may be able to include into one landing page (in this case the home page) but it would be nearly impossible to work the last two into mix and still have relevant, compelling, readable content.

PPC Landing Pages (for the rest of us)

The landing page must be closely related to the keywords the searcher used to find and click on your ad. The link or relevancy between the search term, the ad and the landing page should be as tight or as relevant as possible. If the searcher used the term “Lawn Sprinkler” to find your ad, it would be best to have that term in the ad itself, and that same keyword should be prominently visible on the landing page itself.  Use the term in the page title, use it as the first words that appear on the landing page (usually using a H1 tag with it), use it in the landing page’s url and in the “display” url of the ad. Do everything possible to make sure you don’t leave the potential customer wondering if they are in the right place and that your product is exactly what they are looking for… The perfect solution. And, as mentioned in the above paragraph, make sure that all the elements of a proper landing page are there as well.

PPC Ad Done – Landing Page Done – Done? NO!

In short; test, test, test and then test some more. Any on-line advertiser worth their salt will tell you that testing different ad and landing page ideas is essential to finding that “magic” formula that brings the best ROI to your Pay Per Click campaign. Very few page formats, wording, images, or any other web page or ad content combination works across different markets or for that matter for different websites. Sure you can take the pundit’s advice in conversion optimization as a starting point but even if you followed their advice to the letter it isn’t going to guarantee success or be the best fit for your market niche – only testing and measuring that testing will insure a profitable PPC campaign.

Pay Per Click, ppc landing pages, ppc testing