Check the landing page before you run Google Ads

When Google Ads doesn’t produce enquiries, the usual response is to change the ad or the budget. Often the problem is neither. It’s the page the ad sends people to. Google itself scores that page as part of how it rates your ads [1], and a visitor who lands on the wrong page leaves however good the ad was. So check the landing page before you spend, not after.

Match the page to the search

Google Ads calls the page people reach after clicking your ad the landing page, usually the same as the ad’s final URL [2]. Its advice is to choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and your keywords [3]. And landing page experience is one of the three parts of Quality Score, Google’s rating of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are, alongside expected click-through rate and ad relevance [1].

In practice, matching comes down to three things:

• The page names the service and the area that were searched. Someone who searched for a Saturday physio appointment in their town should land on a page about Saturday appointments, not on the home page.
• The page repeats what the ad offered. If the ad says “Open Saturdays”, the page says it too, near the top.
• The page uses the searcher’s words. If people search for “office cleaning quote”, the page talks about office cleaning and quotes, not “commercial facility maintenance”.

The diagram below follows one example search through the route: the search, the ad, the landing page and the action that gets counted. Each stage only works if the one before it does.

Give the visitor one clear next step

A landing page has one job: to turn the click into an enquiry. That works best when the page asks for one thing. What that thing is depends on the business:

• a call, for urgent jobs and for people who would rather talk,
• a booking, for appointments people can choose themselves,
• a short quote form, for work that has to be priced first.

On the first screen of a phone, the visitor should see four things without scrolling: the service they searched for, the area you cover, the offer the ad made, and the button for the next step. Google’s own advice is to put key information near the top of the page [3].

Whichever the next step is, make it easy to find on a phone. A call button should be tappable from the first screen. A booking page should show the available times without a detour. A quote form should ask only what you need to give a first answer. Every question you add is another chance for the visitor to stop.

Count the enquiry before raising the budget

If you can’t see which searches produce enquiries, you can’t tell which ones to spend more on. Google Ads can count calls as conversions, both calls straight from your ads and calls to the number on your website from people who clicked an ad [4], and it can count form submissions and bookings as conversions too. For calls, you choose a minimum call length, so wrong numbers and hang-ups don’t count as enquiries [4].

Set that up before the budget goes up, not after. Otherwise the budget follows clicks, and clicks are what you pay for, not what you want. Once enquiries are counted, the question changes from “how many people clicked” to “what did each enquiry cost”, and the searches that bring enquiries can be given more of the budget.

Speed on a phone

Most of the checks above fail quietly if the page is slow. A visitor on a phone, on a mobile connection, won’t wait long for a page to appear. Google’s own advice on mobile landing pages puts speed first, alongside an uncluttered layout, readable copy and no intrusive pop-ups [5]. Test the page on an ordinary phone, not only on the office computer.

Common mistakes

• Sending every ad to the home page, so each visitor has to find their own way to the service they searched for.
• An offer in the ad that the page never mentions.
• No conversion tracking, so there is no way to tell which searches produce enquiries.
• Changing the ad and the page at the same time, so you can’t tell which change made the difference.
• A form that asks for everything before the customer has had an answer to anything.

Questions

Can I send my ads to my home page?

You can, and Google will let you. It works only if the home page answers that one search better than any other page on the site. For a business with several services, the page for the service that was searched usually does better.

What is landing page experience?

Google describes it as how relevant and useful your landing page is to the people who click your ad [6]. It’s one of the three parts of Quality Score, which Google uses as a diagnostic rather than as an input to the ad auction [1].

How do I know whether the ad or the page is the problem?

Look at clicks against enquiries. Plenty of clicks and few enquiries points at the page or at the tracking. Few clicks points at the ad or at the searches it’s shown for.

Do Local Services Ads need a landing page?

Not in the same way. With Local Services Ads, customers get in touch from the ad itself, and you pay for leads related to your services rather than for clicks [7]. What they rely on instead is accurate business information: the services, hours and areas customers see before they call.

If you’d like the landing page and the tracking checked before you spend anything, that’s where our Google Ads work starts. A free audit is the first step.