Landing on a good Page! Jim Jansen College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University

Start off with a guest speaker …

Mandy Mazzeo Penn State grad, 2009 (Advertising) PPC Coordinator at Acronym Media, Inc 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge; one of 15 out of 2,107 teams from around the world Penn State Advertising Club Executive Board, the publicity chair internships at Masterminds, One Trick Pony,

Okay, let’s talk landing pages

Think of this as product or service lines (e.g., cars vs. trucks, cakes vs. cookies, etc.) Think of this as your SMB (i.e., car dealer, bakery, etc.). Think of this as individual product or service (Kia Spectra, bran muffin, etc.)

Today we focus on the landing page, which is where your ads point to

What is a landing page? It’s the Webpage pointed to in the URL of an ad

What is a landing page? Lets’ try a three part definition: –It can be any page within a website… –It is where your marketing traffic is directed… –It prompts a desired action (i.e. conversion) Your landing page should offer a customized sales pitch to the potential customer. A landing page should consider the following: –User Intent (navigational, informational, commercial) –Where did they come from? (i.e. traffic source) –What you want the visitor to do (i.e., convert)?

Should be a natural progression from keyword, … Should be a natural progression from keyword, to ad, … Should be a natural progression from keyword, to ad, to landing page

Should mechanically match (i.e., the keywords should be in both the ad and landing page) Should also match the user’s expectation and the promise of the ad You should have a custom landing page for each ad (and can even take it to a custom landing page for each keyword!)

Think of it in terms of designing the perfect landing page … Match perfectly the query that caused the visitor to search Provide every visitor the perfect experience that they were expecting Cause each of these visitors to convert

In reality, we typically have several keywords and maybe even several ads all pointing to the same landing page A factor of time, money, and energy

Why Bother With Custom Landing Page for Each Ad? A well-targeted landing page increases conversion rates … and decreases the cost of acquisition of the customer In Google AdWords, this results in more money to spend on your maximum bids and daily budget, which effectively can boost and maintain your ad positions at #1 to create a forward cycle of “win” for your campaign.

Imagine this Scenario Ad campaign for an online store selling iPhone accessories. What would convert better? –You click on an ad for iPhone cases, and it directs you to the homepage of some company that sells you iPhones. The page features thumbnail photos of all of their different product lines. –You click on an ad for iPhone cases, and it directs you to the iPhone cases category page. The page offers short descriptions of each of their cases with clear pricing and “buy it now” buttons.

For the query, iPhone cases, this landing page will have a lower convert

Than this landing page

How is this relevant to you? Take a moment to think about your current Ad groups and their landing pages. Are you offering 100% relevant information to the searchers who are seeing your ads? Searchers have such a wide selection of other sites to choose from that they will easily leave your site if the landing page is not perfectly targeted.

Landing Page Tips … to boost your conversion rates!

Relevant Headline IMPORTANT: Does the headline on your landing page refer directly to the ad copy that brought the visitor? This is critical to avoid visitor confusion and bounce rate (i.e., visitors coming to the page and immediately leaving). This is the most important element of your landing page, but also very commonly ignored in practice. Also the reason why ideally we should have custom landing pages for every ad that we write.

Call to Action Use text/graphical buttons or hyperlinked text on the page Tell the visitor what they need to do on your page –E.g. “Purchase Now” –E.g. “Download Here” –E.g. “Sign up for weekly newsletter” Like ads, landing pages need a call to action

Consider What is Above the Fold The Fold is an imaginary line that cuts the page where everything above is seen in the browser. How much of your content will be seen “above the fold” of the screen? (without having to scroll down) Make sure there is enough appeal above the fold to keep the visitor engaged right away.

This is the fold To see what is below the fold, the visitor has to scroll

Okay, what can you do about your landing pages? This is something that you have to work out with your client Doesn’t always mean a complete Website redesign A simple fix (and very effective) is to add text on the landing page to match your ad

Okay, … Keywords, ads, and landing pages … What ties them together?

Answer is … Quality Score

Quality Score, why do we care? Improved Quality Score Leads to Improved Return on Investment!

Quality Score Formula Paid search is an expensive game of chess that we play every day against a very well designed computer. (posted

Quality Score Think of it like this -- Quality Score is a grade applied to your keyword advertising Ad groups by Google The grade is based on the relationship among your keywords, ads, and landing pages. The higher your grade, the less you're charged and the more prevalent your ads are in the sponsored links. Quality Score has a major impact on your campaign’s success and profitability

Who grades you? The customers! However, like grades in school, you have a big say in what grade you get Several mechanisms for you use First, let’s dig a little deeper into Quality Score

How Ads are Shown in Google: The AdWords Auction 1.CPC – Cost Per Click (Sort of what you bid.) … but also … 2. Quality Score –High quality scores can drive down your ad cost. –Low quality scores means that your ad (or landing page) isn’t very relevant to a keyword and is likely to perform poorly (or is already). Will drive up cost if you want your ad to rank well!

Quality Score Quality Score is based on: –Click-through-rate (CTR) – peoples’ vote trumps all! –Ad text relevance (such as if the ad text contains a keyword) –Overall historical keyword performance with Google (i.e., how the keyword has performed in the past) –User experience on the landing page or site associated with an ad –Page load time Note: See video – “Google Seminars for Success - Explaining Quality Score ” (2:28) Note: Quality Score is not static. It is consistently changing based on these factors! Therefore, continual management.

So, Quality Score affects … How much you pay! How many times your ad is shown Where your ad is shown in the results listing (i.e., ranking) Whether your ad is shown at all! Okay, but now what do we do?

Quality Score Formula Note: You have control over most of these factors!

To Improve Quality Score… …modify your ad campaign through actions such as: –Testing and refining keywords –Adjusting max CPC bids –Reorganizing Ad groups –Rewriting ads –Adjusting keyword matching types (broad, exact, phrase, and negative) –Choosing relevant destination URLs –Improving landing pages

How do we implement some of these Quality Score improvements? … actually by implementing the techniques that we’ve been discussing (or will discuss)

AdWords Quality Score Begins with Keywords Keywords are the foundation – if your keywords research is weak, your whole ad campaign will suffer Use the keyword suggestions from Google AdWords and other tools But, your own historical data is the best guide! Note: Google Analytics is great! Keyword management is a daily process for your campaign! (you should be doing this every day!)

Grouping Keywords to Improve AdWords Quality Score Key to high Quality Score Ad groups is - relevance. All keywords in an Ad group should share a common theme or meaning Group your keywords by theme (i.e., campaigns), and then segment those groups into subgroups, and so on, creating a hierarchy of small, manageable keyword groups (i.e., Ad groups) Why? So, you can write relevant ads for each Ad group.

Writing High-Quality AdWords Ads Craft ad text that is: –Is Relevant to Your Product –Is Relevant to the Searcher's Intent –Corresponds with Your Landing Page Should see a continuity, from keywords to ad text to landing page A good ad not only improves your Quality Score, it catches the eyes of potential customers to increase CTR, which improves Quality Score even more

Exercise Begin now developing a complete campaign (i.e., the one that you are individually responsible for). Our goal is for everyone to get one complete (and well designed) campaign established What does well designed mean? … 3 to 5 Ad groups per campaign (with as many keywords as possible, ads, and URLs to relevant landing pages). You should be able to trace a ‘line’ from your group of keywords -> ad -> landing page Why?

Next week’s lessons are going to focus on some advanced ad creation and targeting techniques If we have good campaign foundations done, will speed the implementation of these advanced techniques.

Thank you! (reminder to do your daily logs) Jim Jansen College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University