As if you needed another reason to improve your landing page optimization.
Google AdWords recently announced search algorithm tweaks that consider landing page quality when awarding juicy Quality Score goodness.
It’s an attempt to improve user experience by maintaining quality and consistency among ads. Google wants to ensure that a good looking ad will point users to a good looking landing page. Makes sense to us, but how will this change affect your AdWords campaign?
In the past, irrelevant landing page content could hurt your AdWords Quality Score, but could not boost it. Particularly poor landing pages could result in ad rejection or a suspended AdWords account.
While this is still true, the good news is that a great landing page will now work in your favor. Google will crawl the landing pages associated with each and every ad in order to assign a landing page value, which will be taken into account when determining your AdWords Quality Score.
The lesson here? Don’t blow your budget on ads without the landing page to back them up.
Pack a Landing Page Punch
It’s actually easier than you think to receive Google’s good graces. There’s no techno-wizardry here, it all comes down to a few simple guidelines:
Relevant & Original Content
There should be a clear connection between the ads you run and the content on your site. Clarify the value of your site over competitors. And of course the content should be your own – not paraphrased or scraped from other sites around the web.
Transparency
In short, don’t be shady. Users should immediately be able to identify who you are and what you do. Also be sure to inform users exactly how any personal information they provide will be used.
Navigability
Can users easily find the information they need within a few clicks? The shorter the path, the better.
Check out our recent reviews of best landing page designs and share your own by commenting below or finding us on Twitter. Learn more about landing page optimization from our ‘Landing Page 101’ white paper.
