It’s always worth studying Google’s guidelines when it comes to improving your Quality Score. Google identifies 3 elements in their Landing Page Optimization guidelines. These are:
1) Relevance
It may seem obvious to say that your landing page should be relevant, but far too often we land on pages that have very little to do with what we’re searching for.
Make sure your landing page (and URL) is relevant by ensuring that it contains the searcher’s keyword and reflects the keyword theme. Be original! You’ll be penalized for duplicating content that’s found on other sites.
You should also ensure that your visitors are directed to the page which best offers the information that they’re searching for. For example, if they’re looking for a specific product, then link to the product page URL so that it’s easy for them to get information and buy that product.
For Example
A searcher entering ‘Dell XPS M1530 Laptop’ should be displayed a targeted ad for this laptop. This ad should then take them directly to the Dell XPS M1530 page, rather than to Dell’s home page where they’d then have to navigate to the actual laptop’s page.
What you’re aiming to do is answer the question that your visitor has asked. Often this means that you need to create separate landing pages for each keyword, in order to target specific search queries.
Obviously, if you have huge keyword lists it could be almost impossible for you to create a special landing page for each product.
In cases like this, the SpeedPPC Datafeed Software and landing page generator are huge time savers by dynamically creating landing pages for every search term you’re bidding on. Your manual work can be cut down to a mere fraction of the time.
With dynamically created landing pages you’ll have perfectly targeted pages without having to do all the hard work of creating each one separately.
2) Navigation
Make sure your landing pages load quickly and are easy for your visitors to navigate around. Work on developing a logical and organized layout so that your visitors find it easy to move around and take advantage of what you’re offering.
Use menus and navigation bars to create a map for your visitors. Heading tags and text separation methods such as numbering, bullets, white space etc can also be used to plot a course for your visitors.
Keep things clear and simple. Always remember the KISS principle!
3) Transparency
Google places a high importance on transparency. What does transparency mean? A transparent site is one that is centered on building the trust of your users (and therefore Google’s users).
To ensure your site is transparent:
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Include information on your business – the nature of your business and what it does should be clear and you should fulfill your agreements with customers.
Check the example below. Is it obvious what Roamfree’s business does?
- Handle information on your visitor appropriately:
- Unless it is absolutely necessary for providing your service don’t ask for personal information.
- Never make registration a condition for accessing your site’s content.
- Always give your visitor the ability to opt-out
- If you do collect information make sure that you disclose to your visitor how it will be used. A privacy policy works best and is a necessity (see the example below).
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Don’t alter visitors’ browser settings or install software on their machine without getting explicit permission from your visitor. How your site interacts with your visitor’s computer is one of the aspects of transparency in Google’s Landing Page Guidelines.
The good thing about transparency is that as well as helping your Quality Score it provides a great framework to develop a site which will be successful in converting and keeping your customers.
Your Checklist for Landing Page “Quality”
An easy way to assess your landing page quality is by using this checklist.
- Does your landing page load quickly?
- Is your content unique, valuable and relevant to the user’s query?
- Do you have an About Us page (named exactly that)?
- Do you have an easily located Contact Us page?
- Do you have a clearly stated Privacy Policy?
- Is your page clear and simple to navigate?
- Are there annoying distractions like too many animated banners on your page?
- Can a bot tell you’re following Quality Score guidelines?
Remember, the Quality Score bot is not a person. It’s a robot following specific rules.
Follow the rules yourself and make it easy for the bot to see that your web page offers a valuable service to users and is compliant with search engine guidelines.
In the next post we’ll look at indirect Quality Score influences.
