Landing page selection is an art.

When it comes to choosing landing pages for paid search ads, there is only one rule which must be followed: the page must be relevant to the user’s search query.

Other than ensuring a highly relevant user journey is delivered, there are no clear rules explicitly stating how a landing page should be designed, structured and styled, nor is there a landing page formula which works for everyone. Landing pages selection is about finding out what works best for your business, products, services, target audience, keywords and ads, through ongoing testing and optimisation.

Landing page performance will therefore vary depending on countless numbers of variables, making landing page best practice ambiguous. That said, it is important to be aware of the reasoning and implications behind any landing page strategy, to enable more informed landing page selection and more insightful testing and optimisation when comparing one landing page to another.

So to better understand the issues which arise when choosing landing pages, let’s consider one common dilemma which a large number of advertisers face: whether or not to deep-link.

Deep-Linking School of Thought

Deep-linking takes the searcher to pages deep into your site, hence the name. If you are an electrical retailer, for example, and someone searches for ‘Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500’, a deep-linking strategy would take the searcher directly to your Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500 product page, displaying information and price details for the Delonghi ESAM3500.

The benefits of deep-linking are as follows:

1. Relevancy

The user has specified they are looking for the Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500, so taking them through to your Delonghi ESAM3500 will deliver a highly relevant user journey, as per Relevancy: The Holy Grail of Search > better user engagement and a higher chance of conversion.

2. Price Awareness

Users can immediately see the price of the product, so you can ensure your price is being conveyed to every visitor > better conversion rate if price-competitive.

3. Focus

No distraction from other products and offerings keeps the user focused > reduced exit rate and reduced chance of downgrading to cheaper alternatives.

4. Efficient

Deep-linking can prevent lazy searchers from leaving the site if they can’t immediately find the product they searched for > reduced bounce rate.

Category-Linking School of Thought

Category-linking takes the searcher of ‘Delonghi Coffee Machine ESAM3500’ to your coffee machines or Delonghi category page, which includes the Delonghi ESAM3500 along with other similar coffee machines by Delonghi and other brands.

The benefits of category-linking are as follows:

1. Satisfaction

Taking the user to a category page forces the user to find the product themselves. When they do so, they gain a sense of satisfaction and will become highly engaged with the site > high user engagement > high conversion rate.

2. Environment

Users don’t feel pressured they are being ‘forced’ into buying a particular product and like choice > more relaxed > more likely to buy.

3. Comparison

Users can see other similar products, so can compare alternatives they might not have previously noticed > higher chance of buying something. Even if the customer downgrades to a cheaper alternative, it is still a sale and you have the customer for life > higher sales volume and increased customer base.

4. Authenticity

Multiple products creates a sense of credibility > higher conversion rate.

5. Time on Site

Users spend longer on the site when more products are available. People are often only willing to spend a finite amount of time and effort comparing products or services before they buy. Excessive comparison can be mentally tiring, especially if numerous variables are on offer, so maximising the time on site maximises the chance the user will stop comparing and just buy > higher conversion rate.

Landing Page Testing

It’s a tough call. Both deep-linking and category-linking deliver some strong – albeit untested and speculative – psychological arguments in favour of their method.

But no-one said it was going to be clear cut. Paid search management, after all, is about the ongoing testing and optimisation of a campaign to find the methods which work best for your business. What might work best for Joe Bloggs Electrical might not work best for Adam Smith Wired; and what might work for your coffee maker keywords, might not work for your washing machines keywords. Paid search success favours the patient, so keep testing and optimising.

So to deep-link or not to deep-link? You decide.

All too often keywords in a paid search account are evaluated based solely on their ability to generate conversions: leads, bookings or sales. If a keyword has an unacceptable conversion rate or an unsatisfactory return on investment (ROI), it is paused or its bid is greatly reduced.

Sometimes, if conversion data is scarce, click-through-rate (CTR) is instead used to evaluate a keyword’s performance. If a keyword generates only 5 clicks from 1,000 impressions, it has a CTR of 0.5% so is deemed irrelevant. The keyword is then paused or relegated to the second page of search result obscurity.

This is not the right approach.

Beyond the Click

There is more to paid search management than optimising keywords based only on conversion rates and click-through-rates. A more intelligent approach also considers what happens once a user clicks on your ad:

• How many pages are they viewing?
• How long are they spending on your site?
• How many people are immediately bouncing?
• How many people are returning at a later date?

If a keyword has a poor conversion rate and a poor click through rate, but people are viewing a large number of pages, spending a long time on your site and returning regularly, the keyword may be doing a great job at creating awareness of your products or services. Even though conversion rate may be low, the keyword may not deserve to be paused or have its bid reduced – instead it may be beneficial to increase its bid to allow the keyword to flourish and user engagement to increase.

Similarly, if a keyword is converting well but 80% of people are immediately bouncing, finding out why – perhaps by looking at search queries being matched to the keyword – could help the keyword convert even better.

How to Optimise a Campaign Intelligently

Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, are incredibly useful in helping to understand what people do after they click on your ad and land on your site. If your Google Analytics account is linked to your Google AdWords account, it is possible to see page views, time on site and bounce rate for each of your AdWords campaigns, ad groups and keywords (select Traffic Sources > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns).

Once you’ve logged into Google Analytics, look at each of your campaigns:

• Which campaigns are engaging users with a high time spent on site? Why?
• Which campaigns are bringing in untargeted users who immediately bounce back and go elsewhere? Why?
• Which campaigns are persuading users to come back later? Why?

Next, drill down to ad group level and keywords level (if you have enough data) and ask yourself the same questions. 100 visits is usually significant to make reliable, informed decisions – but be careful about drawing conclusions for keywords / ad groups with less than 30 visits.

Make a note of those campaigns, ad groups and keywords which stand out, both positively and negatively. Look for common words that regularly appear in unusually high or unusually low metrics, such as ‘cheap’, ‘discount’ and ‘free’. How have they performed? Probably very different to your more generic keywords, you would imagine, but in what way?

Look for locations, product names and other qualifiers – can you notice any trends? Are there certain keywords with a high bounce rate? Could any negatives be added to reduce bounce rate?

Record any trends and resulting changes in a log. This is your insight on user engagement, and will not only help you develop a improved paid search campaign which will better connect with users, but will also help you better understand your audience and make more informed, strategic business decisions.

How to Optimise a Campaign Even More Intelligently

If you’re feeling more ambitious, export the keyword data to Excel and VLOOKUP each keyword’s Analytics performance to its AdWords performance (select Traffic Sources  > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns > “dimension” = “keywords” > export > CSV for Excel).

That way, when you’re looking at each keyword’s costs, CTR, conversions and ROI, you can also consider page views, time on site, returning visits and bounce rate, and better understand each keyword’s impact on creating awareness and interest.

Look at keyword 8 in the example below. It has a low conversion rate and a high cost per conversion, so based on conversion performance it should perhaps be paused. But notice how page views, time on site and bounce rate are all exceptionally good. Should the keyword really really be paused? It seems to be engaging users well, so why not instead find out why its conversion is so low?

Similarly, keyword 9 is converting well, but if it’s bounce rate could be reduced, it could become even more profitable. Play around with new ideas and experiment optimising bids based on different metrics.

It’s All About Engagement

The next time you optimise your campaign, remember there’s more to paid search management than conversions. If, like the majority of Americans, you’ve ever researched your next holiday, browsed that DVD player or shortlisted those birthday presents on your lunch break at work, only to buy online when you get home (on a different IP address), you will appreciate that keyword conversion data can only get you so far.

Conversion optimisation is naturally biased towards converting keywords, so will tend to ignore keywords at earlier stages of the buying cycle, which may play an essential role in creating awareness, generating interest and engaging users with your products, services and brand.

Conversion data – and automated tools which optimise keywords based on conversion data – are not the be all and end all of paid search management. Understanding user engagement could well be, and the tools to get you started are right at your fingertips.