Google ads are a great way to generate opportunities for your business or your client’s business instantly. 

Rather than search engine optimization or other marketing techniques that take a long time to achieve results, Google ads can start generating business from the day you start your campaign.

But if you’re going to use Google ads and pay for your website traffic, your landing pages must be optimized. if you send traffic to a web page that is not optimized then you risk wasting your ad spend as the landing page will not convert and turn those leads into customers.

in this article, we will cover the critical factors you need to consider to ensure your Google ads landing page is optimized to maximize the results you get from your Google ad campaign.

What Are Google Ads?

Google hosts and runs its own advertising network referred to as AdWords or Google ads. There are many different types of Google ads you can run with different types of bidding mechanisms that you can configure.

The most common type of Google ad is what is called a pay-per-click ad, or PPC for short, and these ads are often seen when you search for something in Google at the top of the search result listings.

These text ads can be set up by you to send web traffic to a landing page based on certain search topics or keywords that are relevant to the business you are trying to promote.

The other common type of Google ad is what is known as a display campaign. Display ads are images that are inserted in website content that encourages the user to click on the ad to be taken to your landing page.

With Google ads, you will typically set a budget for how much you are willing to spend per day and then set some goals in terms of how much you are willing to pay per website visitor or how much you are willing to pay for an alternative type of conversion if you are targeting specific website behavior, such as a phone call to your business.

What Is A Landing Page?

A landing page is a website page that users will visit after they click on your ad.

As the name suggests they will land on this web page where you try and achieve a certain goal whether that be a phone call or collecting their details.

Benefits Of Optimizing A Google Ads Landing Page

There are multiple benefits to optimizing a Google ad landing page. All the benefits typically translate to a monetary value. Firstly, if you have optimized your landing page for maximum performance then you are going to get more business from that landing page which means more money.

agefis vll0Bb04XTc unsplash

The second main reason to optimize your landing page is that the better your landing page performs the cheaper your Google ad spend will be. It sounds counterintuitive, but Google will reward you with lower click prices if the internet user is having a good experience on your landing page and it is meeting their needs.

How Can I Optimize My Google Ads Landing Page?

Content And Keyword Alignment

With a Google ad landing page, the people that are sent to this landing page via Google must arrive at the page and find content and information that is relevant to the reason they are there.

For example, if your landing page is about a plumber, but the ad that somebody clicked on was about electrical services then the content will not meet the need of the user and they will quickly leave the page and go back to Google and keep searching.

This is not only a waste of money from the ad spend but a waste of opportunity in that it’s a customer you have missed out on.

So when you are setting the goals of your campaigns make sure you are sending the people from those campaigns to landing pages that have content and offers that are relevant to the search intent.

Vectis marketing can help you make sure you have adequate campaign/content alignment.

Have A Clear Goal

Make sure you are very clear on the exact behavior you are wanting someone to take when they arrive at your landing page.

If you do not do the work to get clear on this and simply start sending traffic to a page without a solid business plan then your landing page will not be very efficient, and you are likely to spend a lot of money for little results.

Your goal could be that you want the visitor to ring your business or it could be that you want your visitor to fill out a form or it could be that you want your visitor to submit their contact details.

It doesn’t matter what your goal is but it’s important that you were clear on it and you then structure your page to make that goal as frictionless as possible for the landing page visitor to complete.

Page Speed

When we talk about page speed we’re referring to the amount of time it takes for your landing page to load. Page speed is important because if your page is very slow to load then users are likely to become impatient and reverse away from your landing page and go to another website.

Google also pays attention to how long it takes your website to load because they want its users to have a good experience. So if they detect that your website load speed is very slow they will see this as a negative and opt to send visitors to other companies and businesses instead of yours.

Colors

When choosing colors for your landing page ensure that the colors you choose work well together. The way one color interacts with another color is referred to as color contrast.

If the different colors are not different enough then it may be difficult for the landing page visitors to read and interpret the landing page. So make sure the colors have a strong contrast score to ensure that your page visitors can view your content without any issues.

pexels monoar rahman 114907

Testimonials

Including testimonials from previous satisfied customers on your landing page can be a great way to build trust and encourage the landing page visitor to take the desired action.

Testimonials can come in the form of simple quotes with photos, or even more powerful are small video recordings. The more evidence you can give people that your business is trustworthy and delivers the stated promise the better your landing page will convert.

Clear And Compelling CTA

Some people spend a huge amount of money on paid ads and send lots of visitors to their landing pages without having a clear call to action on the landing page.

A call to action (or “CTA”) is a word or text, often in the form of a button, used to communicate to the visitor what you want them to do next. Depending on the goal you have for the landing page visitors it could be something like “call now”, “subscribe” or “check the latest price”.

Final Thoughts

If you are going to spend money on paid ads then you must ensure you are sending that traffic to a well-designed landing page. Otherwise, you could potentially be wasting money and missing out on many potential customers.