Been having my periodical look at AW and came across a post that suggested using AW specific landing pages excluded from organic search; theory being you can focus exclusively on conversion and landing page quality score without worrying about performance in the organic results.

Theory seems eminently sensible to me, but even most SEM ads just point to the home page, so has the theory some fatal flaw that I've missed?

I guess it depends on what you are trying to do via Adwords, are you trying to sell a product or just trying to get traffic ?

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I looked up KW services/KW training so there is a "product" to sell, just little attempt to sell it :-)

Even the exact match ads went to the home page which meant drilling down to find the content relevant to the ad, content which having been optimised for search doesn't particularly enthuse or entice.

Here is an interesting case study of landing pages, for no profit orgs
Landing Page Optimization

Nope, that is EXACTLY how it should be done in my opinion.

Every site we manage has a separate "/ppc" directory that is robots.txt excluded and noindexed. Clients can give us write access to this directory alone without impacting their current set up.

You can then set up MV tests, test landing pages and all that goes with that.

When you have a "super optimized" page, 90% of the time, replacing the current live "organic" page with it can yield some astonishing results.

I can also recommend creating a new sales funnel in your /ppc/ dir (or whatever) and test that there too.

I was browsing for a product I wanted to buy (software) yesterday with an average value of $600. Every single provider used AW to link to the home page. Two didn't even sell the product anymore and two made it so hard to find the product, I gave up.

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Web Design | Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management

I'm always amazed at how little landing pages ar ebrought up in dialogue with even experienced Marketing Managers. Perhaps its because of their relative youth.

Actually, I had a good question the other day from a client who wants to optimise their landing page.; "What if they want to browse the rest of my site and find out info about my company etc".

I don't blame her - a lot of Landing and Name Squeeze strategies reccommend NOT having any top navigation etc. Isn't that the point - to focus the user. Still good question which I have not fully resolved.
Dave?

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Peter Knight - Web Designer
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Eden Web - Web Design Ireland Virtual Tour Company Dublin Photographer

Good point Peter. In general, you can increase the conversion rate of your landing page by anywhere up to 50% (yes, I have seen it) by "removing" your navigation but I don't remove it completely. I am almost certain that one of the factors leading to a good quality score is having navigation links in the landing page. After all, if I am going to buy something, I want to know a little about the company, staff etc.

The best way I have found to do this is to take the navigation "out of the flow" of your message. Usually, this means the footer. It's a nice compromise. Another way I have been successful in making this work is have the navigation linked pages "pop up" in a new window.

You just have to test what works best for you.

When it comes to checkout, it is 100% appropriate to remove navigation COMPLETELY. This is an absolute must.

If you are interested in landing page optimization, I am currently doing the landing page course on marketing experiments. It's expensive but worth ten times the price of the course. It's pretty advanced stuff but any designer who completes it and understands it is destined to make a LOT of money. I'd gladly hire a designer at 3 times their yearly rate if they understood landing page optimization. Most designers learn their basic design principles from college or whatever and most of it applies to print media where the closest thing to landing page design comes in the form of formatting direct mail promotions. Most of the selling is done with the words in the mailing anyway so design has little to do with it (apart from colour of course).

It's a VERY complex subject but very VERY interesting. You can relate a lot of it to yourself and you notice a well optimized landing page when you come to it. Not that it matters, but I prefer buying from a company with an optimized landing page and sales funnel. It shows they are serious.

Many companies are only coming online now, let alone testing and experimenting. Believe me, there are a LOT of opportunities out there for those willing to spend to test. If I had have known two years ago what I know now, I certainly wouldn't be in the business I am in.

Thats a good approach David IE the main site in a pop-up. Because then the user can revert to the landing page which is not normally found throughout the 'main site'....which we all know isn't even the main site at all :O)

Isn't it funny to think that the most important pages of some sites are deliberately not found on the web / organic results.

Yup, away from prying eyes

Although, it's not difficult to click on a paid ad to see what your competition are doing

Thanks for that link Paul, I get their newsletter but hardly ever look at the AW stuff :-)

Been reading over in the WW AW library, as Peter suggests landing pages feature surprisingly lowly....

On the navigation thing, assuming the whole site was broadly on-topic mightn't there be a relevance/QS benefit if you were to use "normal" navigation?