Four Hot PPC Landing Page Tips for Sizzling Site Conversions

by Heather Lloyd-Martin

What do users want?

Compelling pay-per-click (PPC) ads drive traffic to your site - but it's the PPC landing page (the page customers see after clicking your ad) that sells. Your ad is like an SEO appetizer, tempting your customer into your site. Once they land, your job is to sell the sizzle, provide useful information and show your customer why they should take your next action step (like making a purchase or completing a form).

These four tips will help you experience "landing-page magic" (as Kevin Lee calls it in a ClickZ article). If you use these savvy strategies, you'll boost your conversion rates and your search engine positions. What could be better?

  1. Don't drive your customers home (to your home page, that is).

    Good thing: Customers clicking on your ad and hitting your site. Bad thing: Customers hitting your home page and then frantically searching for the product information you promised them in the first place.

    Want to prevent against frustrated surfers (plus give your clients the information they need)? Send your prospects to ad-specific PPC landing pages - not your home page. If you promote "executive gift baskets," drive traffic to your "executive gift baskets" page. If your PPC ad promises free information if prospects fill out a form, send traffic to the form page. Ad-specific landing pages are a simple step that many companies (including big brands) don't take - and a way for you to immediately increase your conversions.

  2. Convey the information your customers crave.

    Have you ever asked a salesperson for information, only to be hit with a bunch of hyped-up sales drivel that didn't answer your questions? Chances are, you immediately felt frustrated and walked away from the interaction. After all, that salesperson was wasting your time - and who has time to waste?

    Your prospects feel the same way - and they need your PPC landing page to clearly explain the benefits of working with you. Plus provide solid information they need for an informed decision.

    It's not enough to list your product features and hope for a sale. To help prospects take your conversion baby steps, you'll need to specifically explain how your product or service will brighten their lives. Will it make your customer happier, smarter, sexier? Streamline their time, save them money or make them look brilliant to their boss? Benefit and information-rich writing will easily transform your site surfers into spenders - and you'll enjoy higher site profits.

    Think about it. Which sentence gets your click?

    "Over 100 rooms were renovated fall, 2002," ...or...

    "Experience the luxury of newly remodeled rooms, complete with private terraces that greet the Bay, and decadent feather-soft King beds transforming your stress into serenity."

    See the difference a few benefit statements make? Learning how to transform features into benefits will powerfully increase your conversion rates.

  3. Create tasty text for search engine spiders.

    It's great when your site copy converts prospects into happy customers. It's even better when that same page gains top positions in Google and other search engines. If you write your PPC landing page copy using tried-and-true SEO copywriting techniques, you can have both!

    SEO writing is a specialized skill, but one that's crucial for great search engine positions. First, you'd discover what keyphrases your customers use to find products or services like yours (Wordtracker [http://www.wordtracker.com] is the industry standard for keyphrase research and will complement your FindWhat keyword research). Then, you'd strategically weave these phrases three to four times each throughout your body text copy. You can include keyphrases in headlines, hyperlinks and throughout the page - just fit them in where they work naturally.

    The key is to enhance your marketing message with keyphrases - not sabotage your compelling copy with a laundry list of keyphrases. If you write at least 250 words per page, inserting your keyphrases naturally within the text is easy - and your marketing flow stays as smooth as silk.

    For instance, if your keyphrase is "cashmere sweaters," you would write, "browse our cashmere sweater collection now" rather than "see our sweaters." Or, if you have a hyperlink that screams, "Learn more," you could edit it to "Learn more about our executive gifts today." See how easy it is?

    Sure, benefit-rich SEO writing has a learning curve. But once it's mastered, you'll save time (you're only creating one landing page for both PPC and organic engines), you'll save money on creative (ditto) and you'll see stellar Google rankings.

  4. Test, test and test again.

    People can surprise you. The killer PPC landing page copy you slaved over for hours can gain abysmal click-thrus. Change the headline and you can suddenly have a powerful direct response machine corralling clicks-thrus and skyrocketing sales.

    Experienced marketers test different versions of their landing pages, carefully measuring conversion rates. To benefit from this trusted technique, write two (or more) keyphrase-rich PPC landing pages, testing things like headlines, copy length and call-to-action placement. These pages should be keyphrase- and information-rich, utilizing trusted SEO writing techniques.

    Next, post your test pages on your site. Remember, you don't want your test pages to be spidered (yet), so robots.txt these pages so the spidering search engines (like Google) won't index them. Different variations of the same PPC landing page sitting on your site or the search engines may tempt the search engines to penalize you for "mirror spam" (uploading multiple pages with the same content as a way of artificially boosting search engine rankings).

    When you're ready to test, simply point the ad to the different landing pages and measure the conversions from each page. When you discover the page with the highest conversion rates, remove the robots.txt command (so the search engines can spider it) and delete the nonperforming pages from your server. You'll know that you have a high-converting page that makes for a powerful PPC landing page - and with savvy SEO writing, you'll watch it climb the search engine charts.

    How can we help you with your search engine marketing copywriting? Contact us today for your customized quotation.

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