Google is the most popular search engine today with more than 3 billion searches a day and it’s already a known fact that being at the top of Google’s search results is worth a lot of money. There are two ways to appear in Google search results: organic and sponsored. I will focus on the aspect of the sponsored results (PPC – Pay Per Click) and how we can improve our position in these results using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques.

Google displays PPC ad’s based on these two main parameters:

1. Quality Score
2. Price

Therefore: Price X QS = ad score.

 

The Quality Score includes three parameters:

1. CTR – Click Through Rate, i.e. the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. For example: if your ad has appeared 10 times and was clicked on once, then your CTR will be 10%.
2. Ad relevancy – whether the ad’s content is related to the searched phrase. For example: if you’re looking for ‘Internet Marketing’, Google will display ads that are considered relevant to the subject.
3. Landing Page – similar to ad relevancy, this parameter relates to the relevancy of the landing page to the search query and the ad. Here are some questions that will help you understand whether the landing page is relevant: was the landing page associated with the ad clicked? Does the landing page fulfill the promise in the ad? Do the people who visited the landing page leave immediately, without converting?

 

Why do we need the quality score?

Why not settle for bids?

Quite simply, Google wants users to get what they were looking for, and the Quality Score is forcing advertisers to make ads and landing pages relevant to users. If users do not get what they want they will stop using the search engine and the result of that will be that advertisers will stop promoting, so quality score is a common interest of the users and Google.

Although it seems obvious, recent projects taught me that the campaign ads are not always matched to the relevant landing page, the keywords do not match the landing page’s content and tags, and the result is a drop in Quality Score and an unsuccessful campaign.

The following tips may help you improve your ads’ Quality Score easily and simply. By raising your Quality Score you will actually raise the ad score without increasing the costs. A higher Quality Score improves ads visibility and leads to a higher ROI.

 

5 Tips to increase quality score

Today, in order to create an attractive and appealing landing page, you must invest in the page’s design. Also, the landing page’s content is often limited, and you cannot write whatever you want wherever you want. For that reason, the following tips focus on technical changes, which are almost invisible to the page’s visitors, but are visible to Google, and they help us explain Google the main subject of the landing page.

PPC and SEO management are often completely separated fields and managed by different people. In my experience optimizing PPC campaigns, there are many SEO factors that can help us improve the campaigns Quality Score and increase our ROI.

 

#1 Tip: Include the campaign’s keyword(s) in the page title

It may seem too basic, but it is really a very effective tip – a simple change of the landing page title, so it would match the main and most relevant words and phrases of the campaign, could improve Google’s ability to understand what the landing page is all about significantly. As I mentioned before, Google rates the relevancy of the landing page with regards to the keywords searched by the user. By adjusting the title we help Google to understand the relevancy between the landing page, the ad and the phrase.

 

#2 Tip: Include the campaign keyword in the page’s URL

Changing the landing page URL is another method that can be used to better explain the main topic of the landing page to Google. I often notice that the landing pages URLs include generic names such as: www.Example.com/landing-page, while a more recommended practice would be to include the keyword in the URL name. For example: www.Example.com/key-word.

If the main keyword includes more than one word, use a hyphen (-) to separate them.

 

#3 Tip: Make Sure the H1 Heading includes the Keywords

The H1 heading is actually the main title of our landing page, and with the help of a creative designer and developer we can place it on different locations of the page. This way, if the landing page is minimal and has thin content, the heading won’t disturb the visitor, but Google would locate it and read it as the main title of the page.

#4 Tip: Add Keyword-Rich Alt and Title Attributes to Images

Another simple tip, in case the landing page is minimal in content including just 2–3 images and a contact form: we can add our keywords to the image descriptions. Generally, the visitors will not notice the difference, but Google will see everything.

An important note: do provide a relevant description of the image, but not without sneaking in the keyword.

 

Example Alt: How to improve Quality Score by inserting a keyword to alt tag.

 

#4.5 Tip: Company & Social Media Logos are Images too

Does the landing page contain the company logo, social media or customers’ logos? right here is a great extra location to add relevant keywords!

A very important note: you can describe the image in a sentence instead of just 1–2 words. For example, to add the keyword “emotional conversion optimization” in the alt attribute of the company logo,(move your mouse over the company’s logo to view its title) (add Alt & Title): “Conversioner company specializes in emotional conversion optimization”. To add a keyword to customers or partners logo: “Conversioner recommends emotional conversion optimization services by…”

 

#5 Tip: Name the video!

Today, many landing pages have videos. It is already a known fact that videos provide a better and clearer way to deliver messages compared to a written text.

Still, you can add the desired keyword to the video name to maximize the landing page optimization.

 

Do you have additional ideas and tips? we’d be happy to hear about them.

 

This post was written by Oded Livne a project manager at Nekuda Web Solutions. Livne is an authorized Google Adwords and Google Analytics partner, specializes in online marketing combined with social media strategy, a creator of memes and a gifted Texas Hold’em player.

Choosing the right place to start your optimization process is a super important decision. With so many conversion strategies and methods out there it’s hard to know where to start and how.

Where to start: It is customary to divide the user flow into Upper funnel (i.e banners, landing pages, lead generation) and lower funnel (registration forms and pricing pages etc.).  When choosing the starting point of your test you need to take into account that the “lower” the point is in the funnel the less traffic you’ll have for the test.

To help you get started and locate where you need to start optimizing, we’ve listed 3 basic metrics you should be following as soon as possible. These metrics will help you decide where to start optimizing and how.

 

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate metric measures the amount of users who visit your site’s first page, and stop there. For example: if you have 10,000 visits a month to your site and 5000 users leave before doing anything else on your site, your bounce rate is 50%. If your visitors are leaving without taking any actions you may need to work on:

1. Call to action buttons – One of the most important parts of conversion is creating the right call to action buttons. You can find 3 tips to improve your call to action buttons here.
2. Messaging – Check your messaging. Using emotional conversion optimization can vastly improve your conversion optimization and get visitors to take the next step in your site. Check out these 3 emotional triggers to optimize your messaging.

From the screen capture below you can see our clients bounce rate throughout the course of a month. Once standing on over 60% bounce rate, has now changed to less than 10% by simply locating the leaks and addressing them.

One important thing to remember is that bounce rate is a natural part of a website and some people just don’t find what they’re looking for or have found what they were looking for and don’t need to continue on, so you won’t be able to minimize it to 0% but you can reduce it a lot and learn from it.  In many online campaigns even 95% bounce rate is good for certain media channels so it’s always good to compare this data versus any other traffic sources performance for a base line.

• Note that there is a difference between exit rate and bounce rate as Google explains here.

 

Funnel Visualization

Google analytics offers an option to follow your funnel and find the “leak”. Once you’ve set your goals on Google analytics the “Funnel visualization” option will be available. Following it will give you a lot of insight on the amount of visitors who have entered each part of the funnel, the amount of visitors who converted and their flow.

This is a wonderful tool to illustrate where is the most significant “leak” in your funnel, assisting you to take the right action in order to optimize it ( learn to avoid shopping cart abandonment).

For example, as you can see below, 50,516 visitors entered our client’s homepage, 52.56% clicked on the button to proceed. On the side you can see where users went to if they didn’t convert, like the pricing for example. This flow will help you understand where you need to optimize or where you can add conversion metrics.

Below we can see that many visitors end up on the pricing page instead of signing up, so we could add a call to action on the pricing page and increase conversion from there.

 

Technology

One metric you do not want to miss out on is the technology your visitors are using. On Google Analytics you will find (in the Audience category) the option to see which browsers your visitors are using, their version and whether they’re using mobile, desktop or tablets. Once you have this information you can:

• QA – Does your site work on all Chrome versions? Are you compatible to Safari? Run a string of tests on all browsers and make the corrections, do not lose customers because of bugs.

• True Story: In one of our recent tests we discovered that our client’s landing pages weren’t compatible with older versions of IE, which resulted in almost 0% conversion rate. This simple fix boosted their conversion rate by over 50%. Below you can see the difference from before we started optimizing and after, with over 250,000 visits via IE this was a massive optimization:

 

• Optimize: A new study shows that you could lose 40% of your visitors if your site isn’t mobile compatible. Is your site/product mobile responsive? Prepare yourself for your mobile traffic and do not lose it. A simple redirect to a mobile friendly page could save your conversion rate. Know your limitations and address them.
  • Tip: To know which pages you need to optimize for mobile add a secondary dimension in Google Analytics (while in mobile overview) – “landing page”, and see where those mobile visitors are going, that way you won’t need to optimise your entire site to mobile immediately but fix it on the go.

Conversion optimization is an ongoing process that requires many conclusive tests and iterations. Testing too many variables at a time can cause a mess and testing the wrong variable can waste our time. Be sure to work out a test plan before starting out and use Google analytics to tackle the right areas.

What are the metrics you watch to help you decide where to optimize?

 

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