PPC tips and advice

Using landing pages to improve PPC advertising effectiveness

As more and more companies enter the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising market, forcing the average cost per click to rise, so the conversion of visits to business becomes ever more important to companies in order to make such a campaign successful. One of the main ways to achieve this is to create relevant and effective landing pages.

Landing pages describe the page on a website that users enter from the search results listing - either from a PPC advert or a 'natural' search ranking. These pages may be existing pages within a website or they can be specially created pages that directly relate to the search term or theme being searched for by the prospective visitor.

In its simplest form, an effective landing page should provide the user with the relevant information they are looking for and then make it simple for them to take the resulting action that's required - whether to make an enquiry, sign up for a newsletter or to make a purchase. Therefore, for whatever search term a user may be looking for, you need to consider what is the best content page to send them to and how quickly can they then take an action.

Landing pages need to work on several levels. They need to avoid physical barriers, such as slow-loading pages, broken links, perhaps the need to register through a complex form before taking further action, or a lengthy checkout process. They also need to be persuasive, with convincing and clear copy that relates to their search, perhaps one or more compelling images, and a direct 'call to action'.

If your website has been designed and written effectively, then you should have a good range of landing pages in place to take advantage of the relevant search terms and potential search traffic that they generate. Your Home Page is not always best option and sometimes specific landing pages for a search marketing campaign should be created and tested with a series of different approaches to see what impact different factors may have on conversion rates.

This article was first published in the May 2006 edition of our monthly newsletter.

If you would like to discuss landing pages and how they can be used effectively with your website, please contact us now. Alternatively, please request a FREE website assessment and see what you could achieve with a successful search engine marketing campaign.