Relevance between the search, the ad and the page affects what you pay and where you appear. A page matching what somebody searched for costs less per click than a homepage, for the same words.

Why two advertisers pay differently

An auction for the same search does not simply award the position to the highest bid.

It weighs the bid against how relevant and useful the advertiser appears to be for that search, which includes the ad itself and the page it points at.

Which means a well-matched advertiser can appear above a higher bidder, and pay less doing it.

The practical consequence for a small business is that improving the page is a cost reduction as well as a conversion improvement.

What relevance means here

Those four should form a chain. Somebody searching for bathroom fitting in Coquitlam should see an ad about bathroom fitting in Coquitlam and arrive at a page about it.

Every break in that chain costs money, in both the price paid and the proportion who leave.

The homepage problem

The most common and most expensive mistake in small business advertising.

Every campaign points at the homepage, because that is the address everybody knows.

The homepage is about the business generally, so it matches every search weakly and none well.

Which raises the cost per click across every campaign simultaneously, and lowers conversion because the visitor has to find their way to the relevant page after arriving.

Sending each campaign to its own service page is the single highest-return change available to most advertisers, and it requires no additional spend.

A worked example

A business advertising three services, all pointing at the homepage.

Their cost per click was noticeably above what they had been told to expect for the area.

They pointed each campaign at its matching service page instead, and rewrote each ad to use the same words as the page heading.

Cost per click fell over the following weeks, and conversion roughly doubled because visitors arrived at a page answering their question.

The combination meant the cost per enquiry fell by considerably more than either change would suggest, since both moved in the same direction.

No additional budget was involved. The same money bought more clicks and more of those clicks became enquiries.

What the landing page needs

Everything an ordinary good service page needs, plus a few things specific to advertising.

The words from the search, in the heading, so the visitor immediately sees they are in the right place.

A price or a range, since somebody arriving from an ad is comparing and will leave to find one elsewhere.

An obvious action above the fold: a tappable number, or a short form.

Speed, since a slow page loses paid visitors exactly as it loses free ones and each one cost money.

And no navigation distractions competing with the one thing you paid to bring somebody there for.

One page per campaign

The structural version of the same point, and it decides how the account is organised.

Each campaign should have one clear destination, and each destination should serve one campaign.

Which means the account structure mirrors the site structure: a campaign per service, pointing at that service's page.

That makes everything easier to read afterwards, because the report shows which service is producing enquiries rather than an aggregate covering all of them.

Where two campaigns point at the same page, the results become impossible to separate, which is a reporting problem created by a structural decision.

Whether to build separate pages

A question worth answering deliberately.

A dedicated landing page, built only for the campaign, can be tightly matched and stripped of distractions.

It also has to be maintained separately, does not accumulate search visibility of its own, and is one more page to keep current.

For most small businesses, a good service page serves both purposes, which is simpler and means the improvement benefits organic visitors too.

Dedicated pages earn their place where the offer genuinely differs from the ordinary service, such as a seasonal promotion.

Ad text and the page together

The pair that decides both the click and what happens after it.

An ad promising something the page does not deliver produces a click and an immediate exit, which is the most expensive possible outcome.

Which happens routinely: an ad mentioning free quotes arriving at a page that says nothing about quotes, or an ad naming a town on a page that never mentions it.

The discipline is writing the ad from the page rather than the other way round, so that anything promised is visibly present when somebody arrives.

And where the ad promises something the page should have and does not, that is a signal to change the page rather than the ad.

The counter-case

Where the homepage is the right destination.

A brand campaign on your own business name, where somebody searching for you wants the business generally.

A business with one service, where the homepage and the service page are the same thing.

And a very small site with nothing better to point at, where the honest fix is building the page rather than choosing a different destination.

Everything else should point somewhere specific, and pointing at the homepage is a decision worth noticing and defending rather than accepting as a default.

Speed and paid traffic

Worth separating because the economics differ from ordinary traffic.

Somebody who leaves a slow free page has cost you nothing. Somebody who leaves a slow paid page has cost you the click.

Which means page speed on an advertised page has a direct and calculable cost, rather than an abstract one.

Mobile speed particularly, since a large share of local search advertising is served to phones on mobile connections.

A page taking eight seconds is losing a proportion of every click you buy, before anybody has read anything.

What to change

  1. Point each campaign at its own service page.
  2. Use the same words in the ad and the page heading.
  3. Put a price range on the page.
  4. Put a tappable number above the fold.
  5. Test the page speed on a phone.
  6. Remove anything competing with the action.

The first two together typically move both the cost per click and the conversion rate, which is why they are worth doing before adjusting any bids or keywords.

None of the six requires any additional budget, which is what makes them the first things to do rather than the last.

What that page should contain generally is covered in making one template work for nine services.

Frequently asked questions

Why do two advertisers pay differently?

The auction weighs the bid against how relevant the advertiser appears for that search, including the ad and the page, so a well-matched advertiser can pay less.

What does relevance mean?

A chain: the search, the ad containing those words, a page about that specific thing, and a good experience including speed and mobile usability.

What is the most expensive mistake?

Pointing every campaign at the homepage. It matches every search weakly and none well, which raises cost and lowers conversion simultaneously.

What does a landing page need?

The search words in the heading, a price range, an obvious action above the fold, speed, and nothing competing with the action.

Should I build dedicated landing pages?

Usually not. A good service page serves both purposes and benefits organic visitors too. Dedicated pages suit genuinely different offers.

Why does speed matter more for ads?

Somebody leaving a slow free page cost you nothing. Somebody leaving a slow paid page cost you the click, so the loss is calculable.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Every campaign pointing at your homepage?

Sending each to its own service page usually lowers the cost per click and raises conversion at the same time.

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