If you have Pay Per Click campaigns you are most likely frustrated by your lack of ROI or conversions. You aren’t getting the contacts, orders or results you desire. I hear this daily from folks just like you who contact me. While each site and site owner is different, for the most part, their frustrations all boil down to the same core issues. Campaign quality, testing and tuning and… landing pages — or lack thereof.

Most site owners who delve into setting up their own PPC campaigns dive in head first without thought our knowledge as to what best practices are to ensure, for the money spent, that they are actually benefiting.

Benefiting is also subjective. Some site owners only want to build mind-share or visibility, while some want folks to contact them and others want site visitors to place a order while on the site. Being most onliners have the attention span of a gnat and many are “shopping around” without thought as to what that click just cost you, that’s where having relevant effective landing pages are crucial to any level of measured success.

Landing pages are the page folks land at after clicking on your PPC ad. Once they land there, you had better have the info they are seeking, great copy and a call to action — because if they click that back button, not only can your ad quality score be affected, but that visitor may never come back — that’s called lost opportunity.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked on an ad to end up on a page — the landing page — that in no way matches the ad I clicked on or what I am looking for. The landing page is either the home page, where the item or topic I am seeking isn’t mentioned relegating me to have to search the site, or I land at some corporate blah-blah-blah sales pitchey page that just has me jumping for the back button. That site just paid for a click that hand no chance of converting — all because the landing page was not considered.

Check out this great article: 5 Copywriting Keys to Landing Page Credibility. Each “key” is required to having effective landing pages and in turn productive PPC campaigns. Read, learn and then apply. (Also click on the link below to review the Landing Page Checklist I discussed earlier!)

And, one last bit of advice… you may want to suspend your PPC campaigns until you get these keys in place on your landing pages so you are not throwing more good money after bad.

At your service,
Judith

Most site owners do not. They think it is an “opinion” that someone at Google arbitrarily comes up with. Many times the site owner thinking their site is much better than what Google’s PageRank indicates.

PageRank is not about “thinking” a site is good or not. It is about the numbers and the data. The data that Google has reflecting the quality of the links to your site that are apropos to your site’s topic and target market.

Google’s PageRank is something that some folks live and die for. Personally, I use Page Rank as a guide; an indication of the quality of a site in general — but not the end-all-be-all. As Google explains:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

For the all the details, you can review Google’s explanations about how PageRank works by searching the Official Google Webmaster Blog.

Only by understanding (not assuming) how PageRank works can you use that information to your advantage and work towards increasing your visibility on Google.

At your service,
Judith