Time to read: 7 minutes

The information on your pay-per-click landing page is not only important for ad relevance and quality scores, but most importantly, conversions! You always want to make sure your content is optimized correctly to encourage visitors to become customers.

Learn more about how you can further strengthen your PPC landing pages from our comprehensive guide today.

But first, let’s recap. What is PPC?

Before optimizing PPC landing pages, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of pay-per-click marketing.

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a digital marketing initiative that allows companies to pay to have their advertisements shown as the top, or “sponsored,” search results. For every click that your advertisement receives, you will pay a small fee for your advertisement to be there. So, instead of relying solely on organic digital marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO), you can essentially buy traffic for your website or landing pages.

PPC is most notable on search engine platforms and social media channels, such as the following:

The overall goal of PPC is to ensure you are getting the most out of your advertising budget. That means whatever you are spending to get your campaigns on these popular channels should result in a greater return on investment (or ROI) for you and your business!

What Is a PPC Landing Page?

When a potential customer decides to click on your initial PPC advertisement, they need somewhere to end up. That is where a PPC landing page comes in. A PPC landing page is a dedicated page for people to go to when they click on your initial pay-per-click advertisement.

An effective PPC landing page should be able to complement the intentions of the initial search advertisement. So, for example, if you are just looking to increase brand awareness for your company or organization, your ad’s landing page could just be your homepage. On the other hand, if you are looking to target a specific product or service, you can create a singular landing page specifically designed to promote and showcase just that.

Why Is Paid Traffic Important?

Just like most digital marketing outcomes, PPC advertising is important because it can help contribute to the increase in traffic that comes to your website, qualified leads that you receive, and ultimately the sales that you make. Additionally, PPC can help build brand awareness for your business, as digital advertisements have proven to help build brand awareness by 80%.

Now that you know the basics of PPC landing pages, it is significant to note the best practices you should consider when writing your different landing pages. Here are a few ways you can enhance your paid landing pages.

Put the Important Aspects Above the Fold

Much like a newspaper has its top-breaking story above the fold on the cover, your site should as well! So make sure you have the following elements before the page gets cut off by the virtual “fold” (in other words, before the browser cuts the screen off):

  • Contact forms
  • An H1 headline
  • Intro paragraph
  • Your logo
  • Phone number
  • Photo or video

Make Phone Numbers Clickable

Mobile search is more popular than ever, and that is likely not going to change anytime soon. So when you have your phone number listed on your page, you will want to make sure it is clickable to allow users to reach out and place a call. To do so, you or your web developer can add a bit of code around the number through the source code on the page. For example: <a href=”tel:+14442226666″>444-222-6666</a>

Ultimately, your PPC landing page should appeal to the overall user experience, whether you are accessing the information from a desktop or mobile device. To learn more, check out our blog post regarding the importance of having a mobile-friendly website.

Get Rid of Distractions

What is the goal of your landing page? Most likely, you want visitors to call you or submit a form through the page. Because of this, you will want to remove any distracting elements that might make someone want to leave the page.

Aspects like navigation menus, internal links, and more all allow users to easily navigate to other pages on your website. But when you use a platform like Unbounce, you can create landing pages that operate separately from your main website, and it’s usually a good idea to drive users to contact you via a form vs. directing them elsewhere. So ultimately, you won’t need to overhaul your site with a makeover to enhance user experience. You’ll likely just need to make some tweaks.

Use More Graphics

Much like the cover of a book, you want to visually appeal to users who land on your webpage. Make sure you are breaking up blocks of copy with graphics like photos, videos, and icons to help add some flair. Plus, graphics are a great way to help get your message across without having a vast amount of copy, something that can be detrimental to a landing page.

If you require some free photos and icons to use, check out some stock image websites that we recommend:

Keep It to the Point

You don’t want to overload customers with information, as it could lead them to get overwhelmed by all of your copy. Keep the topic of your page’s copy to the point, and make sure that you have different landing pages dedicated to your different offerings, services, or products.

Secret insider tip: Having more focused landing pages can also increase your quality score in Google Ads!

Add Color, But Don’t Stray Off-Brand

To piggyback off the notion of adding more visual appeal to your page, don’t be scared to try out different color variations on your pages to see what converts the best. Easy things you can change include:

  • Headers
  • Buttons
  • Icons
  • Backgrounds

One thing you can try is mixing in a third color as a complement to whatever the two main colors of your brand are. Check out this free tool from Canva or this article on color theory that can both help you find the best colors to add to your landing pages.

For instance, did you know that red CTA buttons can increase your conversion rates by 21%? If your business is looking to experiment with the colors of your CTA button, we recommend trying out red, as it is said to bring a sense of urgency to the viewer. Though this cannot guarantee an increase in leads and sales for your business, simple trial and error can determine what color CTA ultimately works best for your business.

Increase Your Site Speed

Before we dive in, it’s good to know that this task can get pretty technical and may require skills you, as a marketer or business owner, may not have. So, some aspects in this section might be out of your control. But if you use the Google Page Speed Insight test, you are able to get some valuable information on things you can do to make your page load quicker.

Page speed is important because if your landing page takes too long to load, the user may think your site is down and simply give up. The majority of things this test will grade you on are highly technical, but one of the things it may tell you to do is decrease photo size and change your image format. Both of these aspects can be quickly done using software such as Photoshop.

Get More PPC Advice From Our Blog

This post was orginally published in January 2020 and has been updated to reflect new information.

About the Author

Sarah Blocksidge

Sarah is our internal Marketing Director and crafts all of our agency's SEO strategies and helps manage our pay-per-click efforts to help us get more clients. She joined the company in 2016 after completing her degree in Strategic Communication at Miami University. Over the years her marketing advice has been featured in Fox Business, Search Engine Land, Content Marketing Institute, HubSpot, Fortune, and more. Follow Sarah on LinkedIn.