Your PPC advertising landing pages, or destination URLs, for your paid search ads are not the same as the regular pages of your website. You need to think about this strategically.

As far as your main website goes, every page should fit into the overall layout of the site and make it easy to get to the other pages. You do not know where on your site any random visitor might arrive. So every main page needs to stand on its own as well as function as part of the whole.

Your paid search landing pages, on the other hand, are allowed to break out of the main structure of the site.

You need to think like a direct marketer. Direct marketing usually involves presenting your prospective customer with a specific offer. It’s not so much “Hey, my business is great,” but more like “Hey, my business is great. Come see me now and save $50.“

So the difference is that in direct marketing, you are presenting a specific offer, rather than just providing information about your business. Often, multiple offers are split-test to see what is most persuasive, which is something that paid search makes easy.

Remember that with paid search marketing, you are paying for every visitor to your website. So you may have better results by using some kind of offer. In fact, one common strategy is to only give the user a single option of what to do on a landing page. Typically this will be to contact you either via a form on the page or over the phone. But there will be no more options on the page. Not even a menu. All you want to do is have them perform a single action.

This direct marketing style may not be appropriate for every type of business. Take a used car dealership. The dealership owner probably does not want to limit the user to a single thing to do, because it should be easy for the user to browse his entire inventory. He should still use whatever page is most closely related to the target keyword.

The main point here is that you should not just use the pages of your website (even the home page) for your PPC advertising by default. You need to think about what the visitor is looking for, how to present it in the most persuasive way, and what will give you the best chance at generating a conversion. Ultimately, the conversion is the most important thing. A visitor who leaves without doing something is like a ghost. Your website analytics will tell you that someone was there, but you can’t see any detail. You need that visitor to do something – purchase something, sign up for your mailing list, whatever.

I would be glad to talk to you about the mistakes you may be making in your Internet marketing, whether that involves paid search, organic search, or whatever marketing platforms you are using. Call us today at 615-375-8793. For ten years, Work Media has been a full service Internet marketing company, providing everything from website development to social media to SEO.