Conversion Optimization for PPC: Delivering On The Promise From Ad To Landing Page [Podcast]

Boost Your ROI By Streamlining The Click-To-Conversion Process

Looking for some great PPC conversion rate optimization tips?

Navah Hopkins, PPC expert and SEJ contributor, joins me on the SEJShow, where we explore the art and science of turning ad clicks into valuable conversions. She delves into the crucial journey from ad to landing pageant and shares strategies and techniques to help you deliver on the promise made in your advertisements.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a newcomer, this podcast episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to take their conversion rates to new heights.

Navah Hopkins is the Evangelist for Optmyzr. A veteran of the digital marketing industry, she began as an SEO in 2008, transitioning to PPC in 2012. In 2019, she became a founding member of the Paid Search Association, a group dedicated to empowering the next generation of PPC practitioners and serving as a resource for all practitioners to learn from and share with the community.

Now, landing page experience is a core component of quality score, which is a core component of ad rank, which influences your cost per click in at least Google and Microsoft PPC campaigns. And what’s interesting is that the landing page experience is a two-part piece: The first is how well the landing page answers the promise you made in your ad, and that goes to the keywords you’re targeting or the audiences you’re targeting. The other piece is a little bit technical, and where you might need to partner with your SEO friends or use a tool that has some of these things baked in. Is the ad bot able to crawl your landing page to generate a quality score? Are you going to be having popups going left, right, and center? Are you going to have modules that may not necessarily behave? So there’s a, there’s a technical component, and then there’s the, the content component. And what I think a lot of either PPCs, may need to remember to think about is the technical component. –Navah Hopkins, 04:47

I’ve always considered utilizing SEO or normal site pages as huge distractions for PPC campaigns. Typically with PPC campaigns, someone knows where they’re going to go. You want to keep them in that funnel and follow that call to action, so they will make that purchase. But it seems like, in PPC, you can direct someone into taking that call to action. Whereas SEO, we’re doing the exact opposite. We’re interweaving this web of distractions to show that it’s an authority, and there are reviews, FAQs, and there’s the schema, and there’s everything else, like all across the board and interlinks and navigation. –Loren Baker, 10:07

If we want experiences that are curated, we need to know how to say yes. Because that’s another thing: what does that experience look like? And we can talk about that in terms of what cookie consent looks like on the landing page. The other thing that’s important to factor in is that if you choose to say no to tracking, which is a valid choice, just expect to see ads that are not valid. –Navah Hopkins, 18:00

[00:00] – About Nava.
[03:35] – What is landing page experience, & how does that impact overall PPC performance?
[12:52] – How important is landing page compliance for in-app browsers?
[19:32] – Which is worse, rage clicks or abandoned carts?
[24:02] – Metrics for landing pages.
[27:45] – What is Performance Max?
[32:23] – Opportunities in AI.
[35:43] – Tips for managing multiple campaigns & pages.

Resources mentioned:

Performance Max: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10724817?hl=en
Google IO: https://io.google/2023/

What’s interesting is that if you see that mostly YouTube displays and others are getting the lion’s share of your budget, odds are you’re not budgeting enough for transactional search. More importantly, your landing pages are likely being served to people that aren’t as relevant. So definitely make sure that, as you’re building your P-max campaigns, you include as an audience signal some of your competitor websites. –Navah Hopkins, 31:17

One of the things that I would encourage every consumer to think about is whether you want the experience of walking down New York City and you see billboards everywhere. Or whether you want an experience of, “I went into a pop-up store that I sought out, and I have this very curated shopping experience specifically for me.” No judgment either way, but bear in mind that advertisers and SEOs only have the data that we consented to give. So you need to share that data to expect landing pages to be a perfect match. –Navah Hopkins, 14:34

I think this new visual era is exciting and interesting, but that’s one of the areas where this is a good time to fail fast and test playing with video, playing with display, ads, and content. See how you can adjust your landing pages to capitalize on that. Because if you’re treating your landing pages that came from tech sources with the same as visuals, you likely need to include a couple of opportunities to connect with your consumer.–Navah Hopkins, 11:53

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Connect With Nava Hopkins:

Meet Navah Hopkins, the Evangelist for Optmyzr. With over a decade of experience in digital marketing, she knows the ins and outs of SEO and PPC like the back of her hand.

Navah is all about sharing knowledge and spreading the love for paid search. She’s a frequent contributor to SEJ, SEMrush, and WordStream. Plus, she’s a sought-after speaker, sharing her wisdom with audiences across the globe.

In fact, Navah loves PPC so much that she’s a founding member of the Paid Search Association. Along with her fellow members, she’s dedicated to nurturing the next generation of PPC pros and creating a community of collaboration and learning.

Connect with Navah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navahhopkins/
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/navahf

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker