Checklist how to create best landing pages for your Google Adwords account

2. CHECKLIST
HOW TO CREATE THE BEST LANDING PAGES
FOR YOUR GOOGLE ADWORDS ACCOUNT
CREATING QUALITY PPC LANDING PAGES
You can have an SEM account with hundreds of thousands of keywords that each have
fantastic click-through rates (CTR) but without quality landing pages, you will never fully
optimize your CPA and never reach your true money-making potential.
To help get you on the right track, here are 9 quick and actionable guidelines to help you
create the best PPC landing pages for your AdWords account.
1) Establish Your Goals
The first step in creating quality landing pages is to establish your marketing goals to
decide what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want sales, form fills, mailing list
registrations, sign ups, etc.?
Once you have established what you are trying to accomplish with your campaigns and
ad-groups, do some competitive research. Check out your competitors’ landing pages
and look up some templates to see how you can design your pages.
2) Consider Your Target Market…
Think about who is coming to your landing page. Consider their demographics, location,
interests, etc.
3) … And How They Got There
You should not use the same message to target viewers from PPC that you would use if
they came from social media or email nurturing campaigns. Considering how your viewers
got to your page should influence and change the messaging you use to close them.
4) Create Dedicated Landing Pages for Each Ad Group (If Possible)
In a perfect world each ad group would have its own dedicated landing page. However
not all of us have the time or resources to do this. Our advice is to do your best.
Start with one landing page per campaign. As you have the time to build a new page,
add it in and slowly convert your ad groups to all have specific targeted landing pages.
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3. 5) Don’t Lead Traffic to Your Home Page
People are inherently lazy. The more hoops you force them to jump through the less
likely they will convert. That means less leads, less sign-ups, less sales, less $$$$.
Instead of leading people to your homepage, test out driving traffic to a more targeted,
conversion-optimized landing page (see below).
6) Optimize Your Landing Pages for Conversions
Here’s how:
n Keep the page clean and easy to read. Don’t overload your visitors with all the
information in the world. Keep it short and sweet and give them exactly what they
are looking for.
n Make it easy for your traffic to convert and give them multiple ways to do it.
The goal of a landing page is to build trust and have your traffic convert.
n You don’t need your visitors’ entire biography. Instead try asking only for the
information you need most. This will appear as less risk to your visitors and will
lead to higher conversion rates.
n Use clear calls to action along with arrows and catchy text while avoiding a
“scammy” look. Depending on your marketing goals you should consider putting
your phone number at the top of the page, adding a form directly to the page,
or allowing a purchase to be made directly from that page.
7) Always Be Testing — “Coffee is for Closers”
If you have ever been in sales or
seen the movie Glengarry Glen
Ross you will surely remember the
acronym “A.B.C. — Always-Be-
Closing” and the Alec Baldwin quote,
“Coffee is for closers.”
Take these two sales terms to
heart. Your landing page is your last
chance to close the sale. But unlike
traditional sales you do not have the
flexibility to try different angles like
any good salesman would.
© 2014, WordStream Inc. All rights reserved. WordStream technologies are protected by pending US patents.

4. © 2014, WordStream Inc. All rights reserved. WordStream technologies are protected by pending US patents.
Your solution: “A.B.T. — Always-Be-Testing.” In the same fashion you would test out
ad text, A/B test landing pages using Google Experiments (the tool formally known as
Website Optimizer). This will allow you to change and test single variables such as
headlines, imagery, body text, and calls to action evenly over time.
8) Avoid Common Mistakes During Testing
The biggest mistakes we’ve seen made in regards to testing are not allowing your tests
to run for significant amounts of time and stopping after one test.
Stay patient and pull in as much data as possible before declaring a winner, then use
that data to set up ongoing tests against the winner to find and display the best possible
advertisements and landing pages you can.
9) Allow Visitors to Share
Finally, you are not in this alone. The strongest messages will not come from you; they
will come from your customers. Make it easy for them to brag about their purchase and
share their experiences by adding links to all types of social media. The most successful
companies in the world do it, why shouldn’t you?
Creating excellent PPC landing pages can be tough. If you follow these best practices
above you will lower your CPA and increase your cash flow.
ABOUT WORDSTREAM
WordStream Inc. provides search marketing software and services to small and
medium-sized businesses that want better results from paid search. WordStream’s
easy-to-use PPC Advisor software facilitates more effective PPC campaigns by
providing a customized workflow, the 20-Minute PPC Work Week, to help advertisers
increase relevance across Google, Bing, and Yahoo and get expert-level results in a
fraction of the time. Whether you’re new to search marketing or are an experienced
PPC manager, WordStream’s PPC management software and services can provide
the boost you need to grow your business and drive better results.