When a visitor clicks on your advertisement and cannot immediately find what they’re looking for, you didn’t just lose the cost per click; you lost an opportunity to convert a customer. PPC campaigns are an extension of your landing page strategy, and the two need to work together – otherwise you’re throwing your money away. Even if the visitors weren’t interested in your products and services at the point of click, you can appeal to their needs and improve your chances. Landing page content is the key to user engagement, and should tie in to the natural user experience.

Approach to Landing Pages

If you don’t already have an analytics solution installed on your site, get on it – analytic data will answer the who/what/when/where/why questions about visitors to a website and help create a robust, user-friendly on-page experience. If you are already working with an analytics suite, then congratulations – you’re well on your way to determining landing page success.

Within your analytics suite, you’ve no doubt identified the keywords that generate visits to your website. Whether the keywords are paid or unpaid, they represent an insight into your visitors. Some keywords result in high interactivity, while others result in high bounce rates. Regardless of the outcome, keywords help you understand the user’s mindset. With some keen judgment you can optimize the pages visitors land on through PPC campaigns and increase your customer base.

What makes a good landing page?

A good landing page should satisfy the reason the searcher clicked on your ad and also direct them to the predetermined goal – your e-commerce page, a video you’re promoting, or an affiliate link. Here’s a short list of items to keep in mind when developing a landing page:

• Web surfers are page skimmers – make sure they get the desired information by using bulleted lists (like this one) and bold, emphasized text
• Use eye-catching imagery and appeal to their senses – emotional connections are powerful
• Direction – get the user to the goal and make sure the trail is well lit along the way
• Keep it simple, stupid – no one is going to read 2,000 words about baseball equipment if they landed on your page searching for “history of baseball”

The Keyword Strategy

Separate your keywords into two groups: those with good interactivity and those with poor interactivity. Identify any trends within the two groups and try to understand what drives them.

Let’s say you run a website called Baseball Equipment USA. Chances are the visitors with good interactivity are those that click on your ad when they search “baseball equipment”. The visitors with poor engagement are those that were searching “history of baseball in America”. Take these keywords and make them “negative keywords” – words that do not generate conversions and on the whole decrease the average time on site, pages per visit and other metrics. If you’re using Google AdWords you should find it fairly easy to insert negative keywords.

Landing Page Execution

To increase the engagement and conversion rates for visitors that search “baseball cleats” or “types of baseball bats,” generate some content that will satisfy their needs but also draw focus to your other products. From the analytics data you can tell what drives these searches – whether it’s price or product differentiation. Write about the innovations of baseball equipment to draw the visitor’s attention to your product line and help differentiate your offering. Be creative, and make sure to take into consideration the reasons people are visiting. Create compelling landing pages targeted to particular search users, and direct them to the right places.

More Landing Page Tips

• Don’t limit your campaign to just one landing page – create as many as you need to target different potential customer segments
• Make sure the landing page matches the ad copy – give people exactly what they’re looking for
• Use Google’s Website Optimizer to generate landing pages with the best conversion results

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