Why Do I Need Landing Pages for PPC?

By Kristen Geil

 If you read the title of this article at all, you can probably guess that C is the correct answer. But surprisingly, about 80% of website traffic from paid search is sent to an existing website page, whether it’s the home page, a registration page, a shopping cart page, or a product detail page. That’s a waste of your money. Here’s why.

Landing Pages Improve Conversion Rates and Lead Generations

Easy as that. The more landing pages you have, the more leads you generate and the more conversions you have the opportunity to get (psst… there are also a few best practices for CTAs that you can use to increase conversions). In a nutshell, more landing pages are ideal because it means that you have a wider variety of offers to promote. Plus, you have more opportunities to target your customers with specific offers. More interestingly for the purposes of this blog post, however, is this:

Landing Pages Improve Your Quality Score

To refresh your memory, a higher quality score reduces your cost per click and improves your ad rank. When compared to your home page, directing paid search traffic to a specific landing page is preferable because a landing page is much more relevant to your ad. Your home page, meanwhile, has lots of things going on surrounding several different products and services. The quality score of your landing page is judged mostly based on relevancy- how well your landing page’s content matches the words and message in your ad. Meanwhile, if you send your traffic to a homepage, you risk lowering your quality score because your homepage has so many different messages. If you send your traffic to a registration page, Google won’t be able to find enough original and relevant content on your sign-up form to give you a high Quality Score for relevance. And a shopping cart page probably only has your product title and description- not enough relevant content to earn a high Quality Score. Instead, send your ad traffic to a landing page. For promotions for specific products, use the landing page to introduce the benefits of your product or service before passing your readers on to a registration or shopping cart page; you can then test this page to find out how to best optimize it. Lead generation landing pages, meanwhile, give your customers an offer (an ebook, a webinar, or a whitepaper, for example) in exchange for their contact information. Remember to craft your landing pages according to best practices. Make the message match your ad’s message, and keep your landing page focused and simple without any extra clutter. Have your logo placed strategically on the page so that your customers are confident and recognize that they’re on your website. Use contrasting colors so that your call-to-action pops off the page, and consider adding “social proof”- case studies, testimonials, or social media posts from users who have bought your product or downloaded your content.