The Ultimate Google Adwords Landing Pages Guide

December 17, 2007

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Since 2007, if you want to succeed with Google Adwords and don’t want to get slaped you will need a good quality landing page. Many people asked on forums, what is a quality landing page? how we can create a quality landing page for google adwords? This is the ultimate guide and the only one you will need. Forget about buying books and e-books to learn how to create a quality landing page for your adwords campaigns.

Why is important to have a Quality Landing Page?

From Google Adwords Help Center:

Landing page quality is one of several factors that helps determine a keyword’s Quality Score. The quality of a landing page is represented by such things as the usefulness and relevance of information provided on the page, ease of navigation for the user, page loading times, how many links are on the page, how links are used on the page, and more.

So, having a quality landing page, your keyword Quality score will increase so you will have to pay less per click. The scores of Google are the following: “Poor”, “Ok” and “Great”. When you have a “Great” quality score the minimum bid for each keyword will be between $0.05 to $0.01 depending on the competition of your niche. Would you like to bid $0.05 for a high competitive keyword? Everyone wants that!

Why Google Made this Move?

Some people started to scream that Google hates Affiliate Marketers, but this is not true. There are several reasons why Google did this move:

• Google wants relevance results

• How many people advertise the same affiliate program (with the same link and landing page) over and over? If you are a user that wants to search for a good domain name registrar and you type: “Domain names registrar” How many Godaddy ads you will see at the top? Many, and all ads goes to the same site: Godaddy.com. So to prevent this issue Google added the quality score and put the most quality ad + Landing page at the top. Now, when a people click on the ad they will go to a landing page which is full of information about the product (this case Godaddy).

• Google wants more money from newbies… Yes, that’s true with a poor landing page you will pay a lot more and some adwords starters will bid on what Google tells them (Sometimes, $5 per click or $10 per click). Do you think big companies will change their main site to get a “Great” quality score? That’s another benefit that Google made this.

And there are thousand more reasons why Google Adwords made the Quality score, but the main reason is because relevance (Remember this little word always when you think about “Google Adwords” and your “Campaigns” RELEVANCE).

I have reading many articles about how to optimize a landing page, and no one mentioned “Blogs and Landing pages”. I will focuss (and everyone should do the same) making landing page using blogs. How many times you read about : “Google Loves Blogs”? So why not following this and creating a blog as a landing page.

Reasons to use Blogs as a Landing Page

• There are thousands of free themes out there that you can try for free (Wordpress mainly)

• Google Loves Blogs

• A Quality Landing page needs to be full of information and updated regularly. So a blog can make your life easier, no programming knowledge and is free.

• With Wordpress Plugins which are free you can optimize your landing page (blog) easier.

Factors that a Good Landing Page should have

That is what most of the affiliate marketer have said about getting “great” quality score in your landing page. But this is true? read and you will see.

1. Sitemap
2. Privacy Policy
3. Terms and Conditions
4. Contact Us
5. About Us

• Sitemap: Creating a sitemap in your blog is the easiest way, here is a Sitemap Generator plugin for wordpress which with few clicks you can create a sitemap in your blog.

• Privacy Policy: If you are creating a new blog to use as a landing page, is recommended to create a post “Privacy and Policy” so you can later link it to the footer of your blog.

• Terms and Conditions: Here is a good site that explains how to create a “terms and condition”. Also apply the same above, create a post “Terms and Conditions” and link it to your footer blog.

• Contact Us: How easy is to create a page/post “Contact us”. With a little plugin you can install a contact page and form easily.

Quality Landing Page is worth?

Many Big companies and also affiliate marketers don’t see why a good landing page can be worth. But the only reason why you really should focuss on Quality landing page is to lower your bids. See this example: Adwords Quality Landing Page Is Worth? you can see that even if I am bidding for $3 Google is taking just $0.05 per click, and that is a way to low your bid prices.

Benefits to create a blog as a landing page

There are many benefits that you can come to create a blog as a landing page and here are some that came to my mind:

• Always Updated: When you create a blog to mainly sell products, you will always have to post new information to the blog landing page to get “great” quality score. I have tested this, and when you have a good landing page, after few days (10-20) the quality score get back to “ok” why? Because is the same landing page with the same information.

• Hosting Welcome wordpress bloggers: Most of the hosting companies accepts and welcome bloggers that want to use Wordpress. Here is a small list of recommended hosting companies:
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  • GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans: You can get the latest Godaddy coupon codes and get more than $20 OFF on sharing hosting.
  • HostGator: This is the favorite hosting for bloggers.

• Easy To Install: Even someone that don’t know about HTML or PHP can install a wordpress, with Hostgator you can install your wordpress blog with one click.

• Free Themes: You can get thousand of free themes with wordpress, you test each theme and see how to conversions are. Remember thousands of Free themes.

• SEO With your Blog Landing Page: You can SEO your blog and try to get at the top of your niche and if you succeed in your SEO tactics you will even get free traffic without a PPC campaign.

• You Can Monetize your Blog and get extra income: Having a blog as landing page you can get extra income monetizing your “other” posts, Do not add adsense or any other monetizing method to your landing page (Post or Page) just to your updated posts.

• Comments: Google loves to have a way that people can “vote” or “share their experiences” with your landing pages. The comments on your blog is your best solution, no complicated forms (like Google ask; just name, and email), if the comments are positive you can gain a positive points because the “future” buyers can read your “comments” as testimonials.

• Easy to Create Many Landing Pages: With a blog you can create as many landing pages as you want, you know that if you use each main keyword in the title of your landing pages your will get higher conversions. No need to do some html codes and uploads.

• Tracking Code: You can add on each page easily your tracking code with any of the third-parties tracking software. Even you can add it in One page called header.php or footer.php just one time! If you are working with 1000 landing pages it will be pain in the … adding 1000 times your tracking code.

• Long Term Mind: In the long-term you will have your site indexed and ranked very well so you can sale your products through well ranked keywords and that means extra sales for free.

Case Study I: 2 Keywords

I will not mention the keyword / niche that I was doing this first case study. Let’s say the first case study is with the keyword Widget. This case study is too see what are the other factors that Google don’t mention and try to “guess” or “find” them.

Domain name: The domain name is not related to the widget keyword that I was promoting.

Well Ranked: The domain was not related to the widget keyword but is ranked very well (first page) with the keyword “Widget” and “Widget XYZ”. So we can conclude with this first case study that having high ranking pages in the keywords that you are promoting is a high priority (but keep reading till case study II).

Specific Country: Both case studies was added specific countries and not all countries. In this case study was United States, Canada and United Kindom. (It seems that no priority on this)

Keywords: The Adgroup keywords are in:

In the Title

In the description (in 1 line)

In the landing page; repeated the same keyword an avarage from 5-10 times.

In the Displayed URL (domain.com/keyword/) In Google Adwords

In the destination URL (as well domain.com/keyword/) in Google Adwords

In the meta keywords of the landing page (2 times repeated the same main keyword)

In the meta description of the landing page (one time repeated the main keyword).

Language: The language of the product is in English so specified the english language.

Updated Daily: The Blog that is the landing page is daily updated and it has tons of articles (big site). Is not just a spam site or a landing page with the only purpose to sell this product. But as I mentioned above that the landing page is a “post” so when is updating everyday the post will go down (keep reading we will conclude and compare after the two case studies and see the little secret here).

Out-Linking: Google said that there should be links from outside and have to be related to the landing page. I did it with a .gov link and a link to the main company have been promoted (without referral) but pointing to a PDF document. So we can say that this is a MUST to have links to other sites in the landing page? let’s keep reading and analyze.

Campaign name: The same product name (Widget)

Ad Group name: The same bid keyword (Widget & Widget XYZ) 2 Adgroups with 2 different keywords.

Bold: I have read many times that is good to bold your main keywords, in both case studies I didn’t do it.

Conclusion:

When the campaign was first started, it was great with a minimum of $0.05 per click. The first 2 days the pay per click was an avarage of $0.89 and then went down for $0.05. After 1 week all keywords went to OK status and after a month still OK with no changes. So I was really confused why the status went from great to Ok after a week? Trying to make some changes I found that did two major things:

1. I made an article linking to the post of the landing page that I am promoting.

2. I made a link to the landing page from other site.

After 2 days, it was back up to “great” Quality score.

Case Study II: Bank Online

Domain name: The Domain name, is related to the keyword/niche that I was testing and this time I will mention it. The keyword is Bank Online. To make a good case study you have to go with a high-saturated niche. With Bank Online keyword I used broad match so can take the most competetive keywords using overture:

Online Bank 184426

bank account online – 9183

When I first started thi case study (II) had a little hope but… Let’s continue. The Domain name, is brand new (registered 2 days before starting case study II) and it is www.bankonline.us.com. You can notice that it has .us.com domain extension (which means focuss on US visitors).

Also you can see between case study I and II. One was a big and old site and this one is new. So it seems that they are not giving high priority to the age of the domain and site but you will gain “points” for the quality score. The main keyword is in the domain name but comparing to the case study I there is also no high priority, just that you will have a higher CTR.

No Ranking in Google: As mentioned before, the domain was new so no ranking at all. In a way Google apply the Quality score depends on your ranking. It also depends on how competitive your keyword is. (Keep reading)

Specific Country: The country was only for US. As it is obvious that .us.com extension are for US visitors. No differences between both case studies. Just be carefull if you are selling a product that only accepts US customers apply it in your adwords account. I have seen PPC campaigns that is for “All countries and cities” when the products is only accepted to US customers.

Keywords: The keywords are:

In the Title of the Ad and Landing page; This is an important factor.

In the description of your Ad.

In the landing page content

In the Displayed URL (Adwords). Do not display other domain names that are not your landing page. Google will disable your campaign and overdoing this you might get your adwords account banned. This is another factor to have a “great” quality score.

In the destination URL; Hopefully the domain name has the main keyword to test this case study. Priority here is to get higher CTR. Comparing both case studies this is another factor to have a “great” quality score.

Using Main Keyword in the meta keywords of the landing page; Also another factor that helps.

Using Main Keyword in the meta description of the landing page

Language: The language of the product is in English so specified the english language.

Updated Daily: The Blog is updated frequently with related articles.

Out-Linking: In case study II there is no out-links, just one out-link to Googlelady which is not related. So here we can conclude that out-linking is not important.

Campaign name: The same product name (Bank Online)

Ad Group name: The same bid keyword (Bank Online) 1 adgroup and one main keyword broad match.

Bold: Just bolded the company names. (2 of them). But also is not a factor to get “great” Quality Score.

High Competitive Keywords

With very high competitive keyword (e.g Jewelry) you will need to do more to make your Quality Score “great”. I was testing with the keyword “jewelry” and the results were:

With a new website with no rank, applying all the tips and steps your Quality score will be “OK” no matter what you do. Then tested with the same content and same keywords (in the same adwords account) but with an old and authority site and well ranked in long-tail keywords (jewelry), the quality score was “great”.

We can conclude from many similar testing, if you are promoting High-Competitive keywords and general ones like “Jewelry” you will need a site ranked (or at least indexed) in Google, backlinks to that landing page, and a theme site for those kind of keywords.
Google don’t want to give high Quality Scores for advertisers that are new in “general” keywords, they want to be sure to give great quality score for the most relevant sites. What is the best to put into their Adwords Quality Score system something similar to their index algorithm?

Results

Main Factors to have a “great” Quality Score:

• 2-3-4 paragraphs of pure text about the product.

• Both case studies was done with a blog and both were great.

• Adding your keywords in the domain name: root/keyword1 as disaplaying URL and destination URL.

• Repeat the main keyword in your landing page text 1-5 times, you can add synonymous of your main keyword as well.

• It seems that the title of your landing page is one of the most important factor in the quality score. Add your main keyword in the title.

• Adding meta keywords and meta description seems another factor that is important. You can do this with a little plugin called “All in One SEO Pack” keep reading you will find it at the end of this guide.

• Updating daily the root domain name of your landing page is another most important factor to have a “great” Quality score.

• As you read in Case Study I. When my ad group went from “great” to “ok” I did 2 things that I mentioned. It seems if you don’t have a related domain name of the product that you are promoting Google need more resources to rank your Quality score. The both resources that I discovered is having backlinks to your landing page and On-site links (Making an article and then add a backlink to your landing page).

Not Main Factors to have a “great” Quality Score

• It seems that the main factors that mentioned before from most of the affiliate marketers: Sitemap, Privacy Policy, TOS and About Us is not important as they mention it. In both case studies were not included. But is better to be prepared for future “g-slaps” you can add them just “in case”.

• Linking to other “related” sites from the landing page is not a main factor. But having backlinks to your landing page can affect your Quality Score.

Main Factor: Relevance

What I really conclude from both case studies, that Google main factor (and maybe the only one) is the relevance of your landing page and the “daily or weekly” updates to the landing page. I can guess that those people who use a rich-content landing page with 10-20 pages and no updates after sometime they will get G-Slap.

So you may ask, how I can promote my landing pages updating my “blog” landing page daily? The rule is not “daily” but it may work every 3-4 days or every week a new article. There is a great tool in wordpress which is called Timestamp which you can make your articles and put it when will be published.

Another point is that all articles that I used was not original (in Case study II), I copy and paste to test if that matters, it seems with a short-time testing it will not.

Conversions

I didn’t see the difference to use a static page or a blog as a landing page. With a blog you can make your landing page looks similar (or even better) to the static pages. There are many wordpress themes and you can choose any of them and test them as well. My conversion was great from 100 clicks I got 5-10 sales (also depends on the niche, days and month) with an avarage of (case II) $0.40 per click which is decreasing almost daily (hoping to hit the minimum cpc which is $0.05 with a great quality score).

Google Adwords History

Many affiliate marketers have mentioned this situation that your Quality Score it also depends on your adwords history. I really wanted to know and test it out and my answer is from 10 different campaigns combining new adword account (Zero days lifetime) and my oldest adword account, with the same landing page and the same keywords are all the same quality score (“great”) with a minimum of $0.03 to $0.05. From this I can conclude that the Adwords history account has nothing to do with the Quality score. Also think about it, it will not be fair for new adwords advertisers.

It seems that part of your quality score is your domain name. When I started a campaing with a new domain name it added a “great quality score” after a certain budget I stopped the campaign and deleted it. Then I saw some great ROI and again created the same campaign with my old account and was “ok” and some keywords was “poor” I was shocked, how it can be when the last time with a new testing account was all “great” then I deleted an account and ran the same campaign with a new adwords account. The same quality score, but after some really good CTR. It went 90% of the keywords “great”. The only thing that comes to my mind is that my domain name was penalized and after some good CTR it went to “great”. Building your quality score it also base on CTR.

Wordpress Plugins

I will list the most important wordpress plugins that will be usefull for your Landing page blog.

Sitemap Plugin: This Plugin will easily create a sitemap for your blog. Without any knowledge of programming.

Contact us: Contact us plugin will make your life easier. If you don’t know how to create a contact form. Just upload, activate the plugin and place the code in one of your page or post. An example here.

Wp-Sticky: With the plugin “sticky” you can promote your landing page as the root of your domain, even if you update your blog the landing page will be at the top always.

Add your Meta description and Meta Keywords: All In One SEO pack is one of the best plugin that someone created, in terms of SEO and landing page. You can customize your Title, meta description and meta keywords in each of your posts/pages (landing page).

Google Analytics Plugin: Add your Google analytics one time without editing your pages. If you have hundred of landing pages this can be usefull.

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