Which is a Best Practice for Optimizing a Landing Page for Google Ads

Originally published: September 21, 2021 03:54:53 PM, updated: April 05, 2023 08:55:31 AM

The short answer to which is a best practice for optimizing a landing page for Google Ads is 'easy-to-navigate content.' However, the longer answer is that knowing how to enhance the ad quality score, ad position, bounce rate, and other vital aspects leads to more cost-effective results. This article will cover everything you need to optimize your landing page in order to get the best outcomes with Google Ads.

What exactly is landing page optimization?

The act of enhancing or improving each element on your landing page in order to enhance conversions is known as landing page optimization. You use statistics and anecdotal evidence instead of redoing the entire page based entirely on a hunch.

What's the best part? You can gather data even before your landing page goes live. For example, surveying your audience will assist you better grasp what they want and anticipate.

However, you won't be able to design the ideal landing page right away. Instead, you go live with the page and make changes to evaluate the data and track your conversion rate.

Why is landing page optimization important for Google Ads?

If your customers aren't clicking through past the first page, it's time to rethink your landing page. The quality of a customer's experience while on your website is referred to as the landing page experience. Customers are more likely to finish a purchase if they can easily make their way to the shopping basket.

Furthermore, the quality of your landing page impacts your ad rank position, Quality Score, bounce rate, and overall cost. As a result, if your landing page is driving consumers to leave without making a purchase, your adverts may appear less frequently or not at all.

Landing page optimization best practices

To boost your website conversion rates, use best practices and solid data to optimize your landing pages. The process begins as soon as you start developing the page, but it continues long after publication.

Consider it as if you were creating a product. You don't create a flawless prototype on the first day. Instead, you might make 100 prototypes before you're satisfied with the final product.

The same principle applies to landing pages. Landing pages, like products, must entice your target audience to take action and match their expectations.

1. Make sure your messaging is consistent with your ads

One of the main reasons you should use landing pages in the first place is to make sure you're delivering them to the right page. Match your landing page language (and style) to the advertisements you're running in Google Ads to ensure that visitors have made a "good click."

An ad for retirement communities that directs people to a landing page for luxury condos, for example, is likely to turn off more visitors than one that stays on message. Consider developing variant pages (or using Dynamic Text Replacement) if you're running many ads with different headlines.

2. Make sure the action is visible above the fold

The upper half of a newspaper's front page is referred to as "above the fold." However, these days, it usually refers to what is shown on a screen before scrolling down. It's precious real estate in either case, and you'll want to make the most of it.

Place your title, distinctive sales pitch, and, most importantly, your call to action above the fold to keep them visible. Don't cram more information onto the screen than you need—too much above the fold can make it harder to view your CTA—but make sure everything a visitor requires is displayed right away.

3. Direct the eye with directional cues

Because it's uncommon for a landing page to be so short that nothing displays below the fold, using visual clues to lead the eye downward is a good idea. These signals can be physical markers such as arrows and various shapes, images, animations, or even copies that keep visitors scrolling and reading enthusiastically.

Prospects should be guided to your call to action using similar directional cues. To make the CTA stand out from the others, use bright, contrasting colors and an instantly recognizable shape—buttons should look like buttons. To draw even more attention to it, you can add arrows, animations, or even a picture of people pointing.

4. Incorporate social proof

The majority of your visitors are well-versed enough in marketing jargon to avoid it. (Unless you're doing anything truly unique, they've heard it all before.) No matter how excellent you think your product is, integrating the voices of happy customers and community members may give your claims a level of legitimacy that even the best copy can't match.

But glowing testimonials from Jane Doe, Anonymous, and satisfied customers aren't going to persuade anyone. Personal details, such as full names, job titles, place of residence, date of purchase, biographical facts, photographs, or even video, might help to humanize these testimonials.

5. Use copy that is both clear and appealing

A good copy should not read like a piece of copy at all, and it should be simple and easy to understand, like the back of a cereal box. While some services necessitate longer material (and, as a result, longer landing pages), most of them benefit from keeping things simple. Consider fewer paragraphs and a more significant number of bulleted lists.

6. Keep your page loading fast

According to a study, 70% of buyers admit that loading time influences their purchasing decision. You'll lose many potential clients if your pages take longer than 3 seconds to load on a mobile device.

7. Use scarcity techniques

There's a reason why terms like "limited time" and "limited quantity" are so popular in marketing. Visitors to your landing page are compelled to act now because they fear missing out if they wait.

8. Make your call-to-action buttons as simple as possible

The reader should not be stressed or confused by a call-to-action button. Make your offer simple, straightforward, and obvious.

9. Include your contact details

You may present contact information to your website visitors in a variety of ways. You can utilize a contact form or put your phone number or email address on your landing page.

10. Experiment with different headlines and copy

In a world dominated by images and videos, the text is still important. People will read what you write, so make sure it strikes a chord with them.

On your landing page, do A/B tests with different titles. You can also experiment with varying copies of body and A/B tests to observe how those elements perform.

11. Experiment with different form lengths

Some marketers believe that only extremely brief forms are effective. "Just ask for the email address," they advise. Anything more would be excessive."

But this isn't always the case.

A lengthier form may be more effective in qualifying leads for an expensive product or service. You'll get fewer leads, but they'll be better-qualified leads.

For example, with a web design business, enquiring about a possible customer's budget might save you a lot of time. If your minimum package starts at $20,000, a consumer searching for a $500 design is unlikely to use your service.

12. Pay attention to the landing page's SEO

For landing pages used in short-term marketing, SEO is mainly irrelevant. If your landing pages are for lengthier projects, however, they must be optimized for search engines just like any other page on your website.

What is a reasonable conversion rate for a landing page?

You might be thinking, what constitutes a decent conversion rate.

The average conversion rate across all industries, according to WordStream, is roughly 2.35 percent. The top 25% of landing sites, on the other hand, convert at 5.31 percent or higher, with the top 10% converting at an incredible 11 percent!

Don't pull your hair out over our anxiety over these figures. Conversion rates are a matter of opinion, and what would be a good rate for one company might not be for another.

What you can do, though, is set your own marketing goals and use landing page optimization techniques to improve your current conversion rate.

Wrapping it all up

Use the above best practices to improve your landing page(s), so you can start obtaining more leads and sales after reading them.

By the time you've finished optimizing your landing page, it should be one of the most popular pages on your website.

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