Ways to Improve the Quality Score of the Landing Page

According to Google, the Quality Score of a webpage is the estimated quality of the keywords, ads, and landing page used. These determine how much a website owner will spend on ads and their position on the search engine. To be precise, it’s a weighted score that ranks the quality of landing pages, keywords, and ads on a scale of 1 – 10.

A better quality score brings forth multiple benefits. You get a substantial boost in your ad ranking, a reduced budget, and positive ROI. Below are ways in which you can improve the quality score of your landing pages:

Stay Relevant

Your website’s landing page should be relevant to the ad copy your users read when they see your Ad. It should be the perfect destination for users whose intent matches what they saw on the Ad. This makes it relevant as there is a clear connection with what they are looking for. Highly relevant landing pages are all about the query searched. Tailor your copy in such a way that the answers lie right there for the user to see. Make the search query part of your headings and titles. Visitors that click on paid ads have a specific intention in mind and it goes a long way if you’re relevant from the word go.

2. Reduce your page’s load time

Pages that take forever to load are often a turn off. Users end up bouncing off to another source for help. Making sure that your pages load as fast as possible enables visitors to get results in the quickest time possible. Joel House SEO takes loading speed seriously because Google AdWords reviews landing pages on a regular to determine how long they take to load. If too slow, it compounds the problem and penalizes pages by lowering their Quality Score. Ensure that your website is light and fast enough to load on mobile devices. This provides the best experience to anyone that lands on your page.

3. Transparency

According to Google, website owners should prioritize the security of their visitors and users that land on their landing pages. This is summarized in three ways. One, your contact and business information should be easy to find. Two, you should be honest with how you’ll use the information you collect from your visitors. Three, your users should tell with ease what happens next once they perform various actions on your website. To achieve these, the content around the form you provide should be able to pass the message clearly. This is necessary to improve user experience. Google thinks well of pages and websites that provide the best user experience.

Easy navigation

Depending on what you’re offering, your visitors will have only one need; attend to it. Avoid sending them off to other links outside your page. You’ve paid to have visitors brought to your page. Make sure they can easily navigate without feeling frustrated. This goes hand-in-hand with staying relevant, which then provides a good user experience. A clean layout that isn’t too complex or crowded should do the trick. Have navigation bars if you only intend to provide information. If you wish to drive conversions, have a call-to-action and a well-prepared opt-in form. Make sure that your call-to-action is captivating enough to encourage users to navigate other parts of the website.

5. No interstitial ads

As of 2017, Google started penalizing websites that have intrusive interstitial ads. According to them, such ads can cause problems on mobile devices that have smaller screens. Penalties include lowering the ranking of such web pages, especially, where the content isn’t easily accessible on the page. Popups that cover the content and immediately show up once the user arrives to the page were some of those highlighted. If you still have these on your website, it’s time you got rid of them. It will not only improve your search ranking, but also boost your quality score.

6. Responsive and Mobile Friendly

Google doesn’t think well of webpages that don’t perform as required on mobile devices. Mobile-friendliness was adopted as a ranking factor in April 2016 to reward websites that were mobile-friendly by ranking them higher in search results. This metric is still an important determinant when it comes to the quality score of a landing page. To achieve mobile-friendliness, a page must be flexible and responsive enough to fit on any screen size. There are elements that normally impede this, and they include large images and texts, flash, and content that is spaced poorly. Consider using a tool to measure how mobile-friendly your website is.

7. Ask for permission

Adding to the relevance of your page is how credible you are. Explain to your users why you need their information. Make it clear what you intend to use it for and promise you’ll maintain privacy. This creates an avenue for users to slowly gain your trust. Once you’ve gotten their information, honor this trust. This is just but a way of improving user experience, which Google considers a major factor when determining the quality score of any landing page.

When it comes to PPC, every dollar counts. Google AdWords once claimed that businesses get $2 on average in revenue for every $1 spent on AdWords. Many businesses leave cash on the table by not adopting the right strategies. The technical aspects of it only worsen the situation.

Whether you’re a veteran or just starting off, it’s important to put into consideration the strategies provided above to improve the quality score of your landing pages.

As you charge forward, always keep in mind that everything needs to add to the user experience. Combining relevance, ease of navigation, and fast loading speeds will improve performance and provide the best results.