The Truth About Your Site s Scoring

The Truth About Your Site's Scoring

By Matthew Elshaw
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-12-15

For AdWords advertisers, your quality score has a large impact on the success of your campaigns. One of the main contributors to this score is the quality of your landing pages which visitors land on after clicking on one of your ads.

Search Engine Land has a great article debunking some common landing page myths so I've decided to give an overview of the top tips below:

Myth 1: My keyword has to be on the landing page: FALSE

From a user's point of view, it's a good idea to match your landing page as closely as possible to your keyword, but it is not essential to have your keyword phrase on your landing page. For example if your keyword is "mobile phone" but your landing page talks about "cell phones" there should be no impact on your quality score!

Myth 2: Adding a privacy policy will increase my quality score: NOT ALWAYS

If your landing page isn't collecting any personal information, adding a privacy policy is unlikely to add much value. On the flip side if you are collecting details, a privacy policy is going to make you more transparent, and that's something Google likes.

Myth 3: Flash landing pages will have a poor quality score: FALSE

Google is getting even better at indexing flash content. According to them, "If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your flash files can now be used when Google generates a snippet of your website". For a simple test, run your page through the AdWords keyword tool and see which keywords come up.

Myth 4: Google hates affiliate landing pages: FALSE

The golden rule here is that your affiliate landing page must add some sort of value for users. If your page reviews a number of different programs and helps the searcher make a decision, then Google should have no problem with your page. Don't just review one product and make every single keyword link to the affiliate site.

Myth 5: If my site has a low PageRank, my landing page won't score well: FALSE

This is quite a simple one: Google uses completely different ranking algorithms for regular search results and AdWords, plain and simple!

Hopefully this should help to clear up some common landing page myths. As I mentioned earlier, landing page quality plays a large part in the overall success of your AdWords campaign, so make sure to follow Google's landing page guidelines as closely as possible!

If you'd like to get started with your own landing page and AdWords campaign, Easy Search Advertising offers a free lead generation landing page with every new campaign!

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About the Author:
Matt is a marketing professional at ineedhits.com, an international search marketing firm. Matt's passion for online marketing began at university and has proved invaluable in steering product development and marketing initiatives at the company. Matt is a regular contributor to the ineedhits search marketing blog.