When using PPC ads such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads, etc., not all clicks will result in conversions. One of the primary reasons for this is the lack of optimization on the landing page after the initial click. While pre-click optimization is vital for achieving good impression share and a high ad rank, post-click optimization is equally important. Conducting a PPC audit to evaluate performance of essential PPC metrics is crucial to ensure optimal ad performance. Your landing page should convert visitors into customers and reduce the number of window shoppers. Dealing with invalid clicks can be frustrating and a waste of valuable ad budget. In this blog, we will explore the essential pillars of post-click optimization to help you increase your conversion rate
What is the landing page experience?
The experience of landing pages refers to the connection between your paid advertisements and the relevance of the service or product descriptions on the corresponding web page. Search engines utilize automated systems to evaluate the user experience on these landing pages, which can significantly impact critical factors such as ad rank and cost-per-click. Poorly designed or disconnected landing pages can negatively affect the performance of your ads. To optimize the effectiveness of your PPC ads, it is essential to align the landing page experience with your users' expectations.
8 Key pillars to improve landing page conversions
1. Focus on ad relevance - The essential point in post-click optimization is to focus on ad relevance. When running paid ad campaigns, you provide various offers & discounts, product descriptions, and much more to the users. So, you must focus on ad relevance to engage the users' interest in your business.
By focusing on ad relevance, you ensure that your page content is in sync with the ad displayed for the users' search query. The better the ad relevance, the more the users trust your brand. As in social media marketing, you find users with the same interests on social media platforms, which helps in peer-to-peer marketing. Similarly, when you have ad relevance for your page, then the chances of the users promoting your brand name increases. Different businesses have different goals like lead generation,brand awareness, form fill-ups, etc. So, it is essential to focus on ad relevance to lure the target audience into taking the desired action.
When your page content is in sync with the ad description, the users' trust in your brand increases. As in search engine optimization, you focus on having title tags, page headlines, etc. and ensure that the users spend more time on the page so that they convert from visitors to consumers. The more the users' time spent on the page, the better the chances of taking the desired action. In search engine optimization, as you focus on guest posting so that the SEO copywriting experts write engaging blogs for your business. This helps in increasing website traffic, increases domain authority, helps in link building, etc. Similarly, you can outsource content marketing services from an offshore PPC agency and hire content specialists to write engaging page content relevant to the ad.
2. Customer-centric headline - The first thing users see when the PPC ad appears is the headline. Eye-catching and engaging headlines increase the chances of the users clicking on the ad. After reaching the landing page, the first thing the users see is the headline. So, it is essential that you focus on writing customer-centric headlines to grab users’ attention into taking the desired action.
Whether you are using any form of online marketing like running paid ad campaigns, implementing search engine optimization techniques to improve website ranking on SERPs, running email marketing campaigns, content marketing, etc., having engaging headlines is essential to lure the target audience's attention into taking the desired action.
To write a customer-centric headline, you must ensure that you have used relevant keywords in your headline. To get the best keywords that you can include in your headline, you can conduct PPC keyword research based on users' search intent and choose high-search volume keywords. As you focus on Facebook Ads optimization, optimizing LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads optimization, etc., in your social media marketing strategy. Similarly, you can conduct a PPC audit and determine the necessary changes that need to be done to optimize headlines. As in PPC ads, you focus on performing a/b testing to determine which ad version has a lower cost per click and higher conversion rate. In the same way, you can focus on optimizing headlines with different versions that improve the users' post-click experience.
3. Improve page loading speed - When you focus on improving the post-click experience, it is essential to improve page loading speed. After your PPC ads appear for the keywords or search terms entered by the users, your prime focus is to grab users' attention by clicking on the ads. To ensure that the users click on the ad, you write engaging headlines, ad copies, create effective ad groups, etc. All these advertising strategies yield the desired results when you have an increased number of clicks on the ad.
After the users click on the paid ad, they first reach the landing page. So, landing pages are the first impression that the users have about your business. You must ensure that you have a good page loading speed. This is essential as when it takes long for the page to load, users are likely to leave your website.
With the advancement of technology, users' buying activities keep changing with the marketing trends. So, advertisers need to focus on the PPC trends when running different ad formats like video ads, display ads, search ads, mobile ads, performance max campaigns, etc. This technological advancement presents before you the most impatient users to target. You must ensure that your ads are optimized for mobile devices. The importance of page loading speed can be understood by the point that 53% of users leave a mobile page that takes more than 3 minutes to load. So, it is vital that you not only work on strategic marketing to create the best ads but also conduct an SEO audit to analyze the page loading speed. Some of the points that you can focus on to improve page loading speed are:
a. Compress and optimize images.
b. Reduce the redirects (if any) like 301 and 302 redirects, 404 redirects, etc.
c. Clear your web page cache.
d. Enable browser caching.
e. Defer loading your CSS and JavaScript files.
4. Optimize website for mobile devices - To improve post-click landing page conversions, you need to optimize your page. The user's time spent on mobile apps is increasing compared to browsers. According to InsiderIntelligence, users spent 3:22 per day in 2022 and this will grow to 3:28 per day in 2023. It also says that adults in the U.S. will be spending 43 more minutes per day on smartphones than on TVs. So, these stats clearly state the importance of optimizing your ads for mobile devices.
As the users' time spent on mobile devices is increasing, advertisers must target the users on these devices. So, you can work on running ads on the Google Display Network(GDN), so that your ads are presented to a wide range of audiences, increasing the chances of users clicking on your ads.
In today’s era of social media marketing, apart from running Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, advertisers need to focus on running Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, Instagram Ads, Twitter Ads , etc., to lure the target audience to reach their landing page. Different social media platforms have different users like Facebook is mostly used by friends & family, LinkedIn by corporates, job-seekers and C-level executives, etc. So, you need to conduct a social media audit that helps you determine which platform maximizes your advertising spend. Depending on the advertising goals, you can conduct a PPC audit and decide which social media platform brings the relevant traffic. This helps you to plan your strategy and adjust your advertising budget. When you spend the budget on the relevant platforms, you target the users with high chances of taking the desired action, which helps maximize the advertising ROI. As you outsource Facebook Ads to maximize the return on ad spend, similarly, you can outsource PPC ads to increase the performance of your ads.
5. Make website navigation easy - The next essential point in post-click optimization is that you need to make website navigation easy. As in search engine optimization, you focus on SEO pagination so that search engine crawlers easily identify the page to show to the users' search query. Similarly, when working on Google Ads optimization, Microsoft Ads optimization, YouTube Ads optimization, Facebook Ads optimization, LinkedIn Ads optimization, etc., you must ensure that the website navigation for users is easy.
When the user reaches the landing page after clicking on the search results for the keywords or search terms entered, it is essential that they are provided with the desired results. However, there may be chances that they also look for other products or services on the website. For this, they would look to navigate through different sections on the website. So, you must ensure that you grab users' attention by selecting more business offerings. E.g., when you are running e-commerce PPC ads, then your e-commerce website would have multiple products listed on it. So, there may be users that buy a particular product and also look to purchase other products that they find useful. You must ensure that whichever section they want to reach on the website, you make their navigation easy.
You can focus on e-commerce SEO to ensure that the relevant pages load quickly and have unique content on the page. To increase the post-click conversion rate on the website, you must focus on improving the post-click experience of the users. You can offer them discounts & offers that create a sense of urgency among the target audience to take the desired action.
6. Use CTAs and add forms - When focusing on post-click optimization, you need to focus on utilizing the CTAs to their full potential. To improve the users' post-click experience, you need to focus on grabbing users' attention to take the desired action on the page. When you add engaging CTAs to the page, there is a high chance that the users will be attracted to it and take the desired steps.
When running a PPC ad campaign, your main objective should be to create effective ad groups and add ad extensions that entice users to click on your ads. Additionally, utilizing a clear call-to-action can encourage visitors to take the next step and convert into loyal customers.
Ad extensions may differ for users, like sitelink extensions, call extensions, callout extensions, structured snippet extensions, image extensions, lead form extensions, promotion extensions, etc. You can leverage these extensions as per your advertising goals and lure the target audience to click on the ads. As you use Google Ads shared library to make multiple changes, similarly, in Google Ads Editor, you can add labels, headlines, final URLs, etc., to ensure your ads performance increases. You must ensure to use a call to action at the maximum potential to ensure that you have an increased number of clicks.At times there are also chances that the users want to contact the business for specific queries. You must ensure that you have added forms to your landing page, so that the users can get in touch for answers to their queries.
7. Unique and engaging content - To improve users' post-click experience on the page, you need to have unique and engaging content. ‘Content is king’ - the saying holds its relevance in the digital marketing world for any form of online marketing technique. When working on post-click optimization, you need to focus on writing unique & engaging content to avoid any search engine penalties.
As multiple advertisers concentrate on keyword bidding with the same products or services your business provides, it is essential to provide them with unique content that keeps them engaged with the landing page. When you have unique content present on the website, the search engine bots rank your content higher for the keywords or search terms entered. When the search engine crawlers look to display your page matching the users' search query, it is vital that you focus on providing them with unique content.
As you focus on avoiding keyword cannibalization to ensure that the relevant page appears for the users' search query and also perform SEO pagination for this. In the same way, unique content helps to have a higher ad rank & position, which increases the impressions share, ultimately increasing the clicks on the ad. You need to focus on touching the unique selling proposition of users and create a sense of urgency among them to take the desired action.
8. Show testimonials and customer badges - The next essential point in post-click optimization is to focus on adding testimonials and customer badges. When you add testimonials of users that are satisfied with the product or services that you provide, the visitors feel that the company showcases how already engaged users feel about the business. Having these customer badges displayed on the web pages lures the users to navigate through different sections. The more the users are engaged with the page, the better are the chances of them taking the desired action.
As in SEO campaigns, you focus on conducting SEO audit and improving the perform essential SEO metrics to achieve the desired goals. Similarly, with your PPC campaigns, you need to focus on adding the past experience of users that they had after availing of the product or services. You need to add negative feedback or comments highlighting space for improvement. You can then highlight how you worked on the suggestions & improved user satisfaction. When the visitors see these changes, they think that the business thinks from the users' perspective and highlights even the negative comments. For established brands mentioning the testimonials may not be a big issue as they already have multiple feedbacks to present. However, for small business SEO you need to mention these comments to ensure that you build brand awareness and more users know about your brand. These customer badges help grow your brand reputation which helps in link building, lower spam scores, etc.
Conclusion
The essential point in any form of online marketing is to increase the conversion rate. Whether you are running email marketing campaigns, content marketing campaigns, etc., the ultimate goal in online advertising is to increase website traffic and enhance the conversion rate. With PPC ads, all your marketing efforts yield the desired results only when the users take the desired action on the landing page.
The above strategies discussed above lure the users into taking the desired action on the landing page, which increases your website conversion rate. Just as you focus on writing engaging ad copies, ad descriptions, headlines, product page descriptions, etc., to grab users' attention into clicking on your ads. Similarly, to ensure that these users take the desired action on the landing page and not do window shopping, you must focus on post-click optimization to the conversion rate. If you find post-click optimization a tough task to perform, you can outsource a digital marketing company that has expertise in campaign analysis, PPC audit, etc., and also has expertise in white label SEO services like detox & penalty removal, SEO analytics, SEO reseller, etc. You can also avail of offshore digital marketing services as the virtual assistants help you with go-to-market strategy, website conversion analysis, competition analysis, market research, reputation management, digital analytics, etc.
References:
•Landing page optimization: how to optimize your landing pages for more conversions
•The ultimate guide to landing pages