Everyone who knows Google AdWords is familiar with the term Quality Score in one way or the other.
According to Google, “Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.
The Quality Score is a way of rating the relevance of the keywords, ads and the landing pages. Therefore, it becomes one of the most important aspects that an advertiser looks for.
Generally, the Quality Score is taken as a number between 1 to 10. However, there are 3 main metrics that affect the Quality Score i.e
- Click Through Rate
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Relevance.
Although many advertisers know the importance of Quality Score. They are not sure as to where to begin the strategy to optimize it.
In the Quality Score optimizing the process, the advertisers mainly focus on optimizing the CTR and the Ad Relevance, while almost forgetting about the third metric that is the landing page relevance.
Here, we are going to focus on the third metric of Quality Score i.e. the landing page and will tell you the insights of how you can optimize the landing pages to improve your Quality Score.
What is the importance of Quality Score?
Quality Score is that metric that metric that represents the relevance of your ads to the search queries of the users.
Moreover, when Quality Score is combined with the CPC bid, it determines the Ad Rank.
This point holds extreme importance especially for those advertisers who have a limited budget. The importance of Quality Score is that factor it affects the overall health and the success of your AdWords account.
What factors determine the Landing Page Quality Score?
According to Google, there are four factors that determine the quality score of the landing page. These factors are relevant and original content, transparency, loading speed of the landing page and navigability.
Google wants the advertisers to make quality websites that are most relevant and useful to the users.
The guidelines of a good landing page also initiate in helping the advertiser to turn the visitors into customers.
Measuring Landing Page Relevance
To check the current status Quality Score with regard to the Landing Page, AdWords provides you with a set of columns. You can add those columns to the interface where you can view the factors that affect the Quality Score.
After you have added the columns, you can easily measure the quality score and get an idea of the places where improvement needs to be done.
There you will find three different levels that tell you about the status of the Quality Score:
- Above Average: Having an above average Quality Score means that you have achieved the highest rating.
- Average: Having an average Quality Score means that you have achieved the adequate rating.
- Below Average: Having a below average Quality Score means that you have achieved a poor rating.
Landing Page Optimization Tips to Improve the Quality Score
1. Relevant and Original Content
The first thing that you should measure is the relevance of the content to your keyword. Therefore, you should always look forward to creating a landing page that is relevant to your keywords as well as ads.
Create landing pages that are relevant to your keywords as well as ads. Click To Tweet
Enriching your Landing Page with relevant and original content is one of the most important things that you should do. Ensure that the content of your Landing Page correlates and matches with your Ads and Keywords.
Your Landing Page should clearly depict the idea that was given in your ads. Moreover, your Landing Page should clearly be about the search query of the user which made the user click on your ad.
Having the exact search query or even the parts and titles of the search query in the landing page is a pretty good move. Make sure that there is a clear connection between what the user is looking for and where are you directing them after they click on your ads.
When you send your visitors to a highly relevant landing page, the performance of your account gets improved and your Quality Score gets increased.
While creating your Landing Pages, it is advised to tailor your content especially the titles and headlines according to the search queries that your visitors might be using. You also need to be clear with your intentions.
Apart from the relevance, the originality aspect is also taken into consideration because it wants your Landing Pages to have some kind of value. Google also measures the originality of your Landing Pages to compare it with similar advertisers and their offerings.
2. Landing Page Loading Speed
Did you ever try to visit a website that took forever to open? What was your next move then? Did you wait for the website to open or did you just bounced off from that site?
Majority of the users are in a hurry, they do not have all the time in the world to wait for the website to get opened. They simply bounce off and visit another website.
If you keep you make your visitors wait for the landing page to load, they will simply press the back button and go somewhere else.
Putting in a lot of effort in creating the right landing page by putting in relevant content, high-quality images and self-explanatory videos will go in vain if the loading speed of your landing page is too slow.
When Google encounters websites whose Landing Page Loading Speed is low, it penalises those websites which further reduces the Quality score.
As the loading speed of the Landing Page has a large impact on the Quality Score, you should keep testing your Landing Page to make sure that they have a pretty reasonable speed.
Google also provides you with tools like the Page Insights Tool to evaluate the speed of your Landing Page. It also provides you certain tips to improve the speed of your Landing Page.
3. Easy to Navigate
After you have directed your visitors towards your Landing Page, you should make sure that they can easily navigate their way around the site and find what they are looking for.
Make sure that it does not take forever for the visitor to find that offer that brought him to the Landing Page. Rather, they should immediately find the whatever they are looking for.
Don’t confuse the visitors by providing a hundred thousand links that go through all other parts of your website.
The same goes for the distractions as well. Distractions are those inputs in your Landing Page that prevent your visitor from completing the desired conversion actions and diverts them to something else.
You need to take strong measures to minimize the distractions like the non-essential product options, a lot of external links, and unnecessary information that can increase the bounce rate of your website.
Hence, to eliminate the distractions, you can either shrink or remove the irrelevant menu, pull off the sidebars and big headers that are of no use.
If your Landing Page is not easy to navigate, your potential customers will just abandon your website and look for the information somewhere else. Ensure that all the categories related to your product/service are divided clearly and assure that the search feature works.
Hence, to sort the problem of navigation, design a Landing Page that clearly states the offers and promotions. Make sure that it also includes an outstanding Call-to-Action for you to increase your conversion rate.
4. Transparency
To prove that your business is legal and valid, you need to be transparent in your approach. You need to make sure that your business and contact information is easily available. For this reason, it becomes very important to include the contact information of your business on your Landing Page.
The contact information that you provide on your Landing Page helps your visitors to get in touch with you as per their requirement.
The contact information not only increases the probability of getting more conversions but they also make your business more reliable and authoritative.
To make your Landing Page even more persuasive and valid, it is advised to add the phone number, physical address, email along with social media links.
Hence, the more you are available for your customers, the more you are creating a bond with them. This initiates the visitor to get converted into a customer.
Another aspect of transparency can be related to the information that you are collecting from your visitors. Let the visitors know the reason behind the collection of data. You also need to tell your visitors that the information that they provide will be carefully used and implemented.
5. Write Powerful Headlines
The first thing on the Landing Page that has the potential of grabbing the attention of the user is none other than the headline. It is so important because it has the power to make or break your Landing Page.
While writing the headline for your Landing Page, make sure that the headline is strong enough to hold the attention of the user so that they stay for long enough to see your offer.
Owing to the fact that the headline has only a few seconds to attract the user.
The headline bears so much of importance because according to one study 8 out of 10 people read the headline and if they find it interesting enough they move towards the Landing Page. So, the headline decides whether the visitor will go through the entire Landing Page or not.
Not only your headline should be attractive enough, but it should also inform the visitor about your product/services. To get the best headline, keep testing several headlines to see which one of them gets the best response from the visitors.
Moreover, do not beat around the bush and create headlines that are short, concise and precise.
6. Make your Landing Page Device Compatible
This requires no brainstorming. The users do not use only one device while they are searching on the internet. There are various kinds of devices that are used by the visitors on regular basis. Some use desktop computers, while the others use tablets and the majority of the users use the mobile device to conduct a research on the internet.
However, you should take this point into consideration while creating your landing page. If you think that you are sorted by creating a single layout of the Landing page for all the possible devices, you are doing nothing but simply blowing the chances of getting conversions.
Check the device compatibility of your Landing Page with respect to all the devices. Click To Tweet
You can use tools like Mobile-Friendly Test, BrowserStack and Responsive Design Checker to check the device compatibility of your Landing Pages.
On the contrary, a very large percentage of traffic that is generated comes from the mobile devices. And for this reason, it becomes very important for you to optimize the Landing Pages for the mobile audiences as well.
You should keep your entire focus on the headline and the Call-to-Action. See to it that the content on your mobile Landing Page is easily readable without having to zoom it.
On the more, it is a real hassle to copy the phone number from the landing page to the dial pad. Hence, to make it really convenient for the visitors to call you, you should make sure that all the numbers that are present on your Landing Page are clickable.
7. Focus more on Benefits rather than the Features
This is probably one of the early lessons of advertising that you should be knowing. You should be laser-focused on highlighting the benefits rather than the features.
Well, a feature is the specification of your product/service. It tells the users about the functionality of your product/service.
On the other hand, a benefit is an advantage that the user is going to gain when he/she uses that product.
Okay, so now you have two options to highlight on your Landing Page i.e the benefits or the features.
The question arises here is that how are you going to make your visitors convert on your Landing Page?
- By explaining to them how outstanding your product/service is?
- By explaining the advantages that the users are going to gain from your product/service?
Well, by far you must have got your answer. Just in case you didn’t get the answer, the correct option is the second one.
There is a difference between the benefits and features of your product which we have already stated above.
When you only mention the features of your product/service on your Landing Page, you simply assume that your visitors are technically expert when it comes to your product/service.
Don’t assume that the visitor will know about your product/service on its own. You should take an initiative to tell a story about your product/service in the clearest manner. Talk to your visitors in the terms that they understand well. Do not use extremely high sounding words and expect them to respond accordingly.
On the other hand, when you talk in terms of benefits, you are picturizing a story in front of your visitors. A picture perfect scenario that makes the visitors inclined towards getting converted.
Benefits usually solve a customer’s pain point. Click To Tweet
If a customer is going through a major problem and your product/service provides a benefit to them in terms of solving that problem. Then there is a 100% guarantee that the visitor will definitely convert.
8. Include Social Proofs and Trust Signals
Why should your potential customer trust you? Just because you are claiming that your product/service is the best, doesn’t make it the best. You need to support all your claims with proper social proofs and trust signals so that your potential customers begin to trust you.
Actually, the fact is that nowadays before making a purchase for any product/service, people look at the review of that particular product/service. They trust the reviews and the testimonials more than the product descriptions.
People think that usually, the advertisers boast about their product/service a bit too much. But the customers who have already used that product/service will always give the correct feedback, irrespective of whether the feedback is positive or negative.
You need to add credibility to your Landing Page so that your potential customers can trust you.
Credibility can be added with the help of social proofs and testimonials. Click To Tweet
The testimonials help the visitors to trust you and also assures them about the validity of your business. If the visitors get to see the trustworthy review or testimonial, they will become more inclined towards your offer and will look forward to making the purchase.
Besides adding the testimonials, you can also go ahead and add trust signals. They might be the awards that you have won. Or any kind of social recognition that you have been given by a third party. This will further assure that your business is trustworthy enough to make a purchase with.
9. Use High-Quality Images and Videos
Image Source: Drift
No doubt action speaks louder than words. When content is combined with appropriate images and videos, the performance of the Landing Page gets a boost automatically.
Images give you a visual description of what is being said on your Landing Page. Click To Tweet
Indeed the images make the Landing Page highly attractive and engaging. The images help the users to bring out their necessary emotions. As the emotions of the users are drawn out, they are more likely to get converted.
More than the content, images are shared on the social sites. Therefore, they lead to an increase in the conversion rate of your Landing Page.
Suppose if you are an e-commerce owner who deals in the online business. No matter how great or relevant content you write, the customers will first see the image of the product that you intend to sell.
After they are satisfied with the product, then only they will look forward to the description and specifications. So, while choosing the images, you should ensure that the image should be large, clear and of high-quality.
In addition to the images, videos should also be used in your Landing Page whenever possible. It is one of the best mediums where the visitors can experience your message by putting a very little effort.
Videos increase the length of the time that people stay on your page. This gives your message a long time to get sunk in the minds of the customers. Most of the people are lazy in the sense that they will scan through the content but will watch the whole video properly.
Put explainer videos of your product/service to explain how the particular product or service is used.
10. Add Strong Call-to-Action
Image Source: Kissmetrics
Well, the Call-to-Action is precisely the most important component of your Landing Page. CTA is basically a button that represents the action that you want your visitor to take when they are directed to your Landing Page after clicking on your ad.
A CTA is a key to conversion, so if you do not have a CTA on your Landing Page, your visitors won’t convert.
Make sure that your visitor does not have to look for it. The CTA should be so prominent that it strikes to the visitor as soon as he lands on the Landing Page.
Don’t just create a CTA in a hurry. Take a considerable amount of time to design the CTA. And see it too it that is not common or average. Keep testing your CTA at regular intervals to get the best results.
Make your CTA button clear using contrasting colours. Click To Tweet
Do not use the same colour of that of your landing page. As that will prevent the CTA from being prominent.
Do not make this mistake of making the CTA using long words or sentences. Keep your CTA short and use action oriented words.
Final Thoughts
However, there is no exact formula for calculating the Quality Score. As the Quality Score depends on three metrics i.e. Click Through Rate, Ad Relevance, and the Landing Page Relevance, we can always look forward to improving these three factors.
Often the advertisers are more inclined towards optimizing the keywords and the ads in hope of improving the Quality Score. They almost forget about the Landing Page which is the first step towards the conversion funnel. Therefore, through this blog, we have given you insights on how can you optimize your Landing Pages in order to improve the Quality Score.
Originally published at adstriangle.com on September 4, 2017.
