Google AdWords Optimisation
Posted by Marketing Man in Google AdWords,Marketing for Accountants,Online Marketing | September 25, 2012
Far too many accountants who are marketing themselves online using Google’s paid search ads are directing visitors who click on the ads directly to their homepage, they are in desperate need of some Google AdWords Optimisation. Directing all traffic to your homepage is bad for a number of reasons:
- Homepage’s are generally very generic. If you are trying to convert a visitor into a sales lead you will want to be a lot more focused with a clear call to action. The content of the page should accurately match the keyword that they searched for. For instance if someone clicked your ad after searching for “payroll services” and they land on your homepage you are asking that visitor to then search your site for the relevant information. What they should be presented with is clear and concise information on your payroll services with a clear call to action (either a contact form and a large call us now graphic).
- Homepage’s are generally very cluttered with a lot of links to other pages. What you need to remember is that this visitor arrived at your site for a very specific reason, don’t make them think and don’t give them a chance to lose focus by clicking through other pages. Present them with exactly what they need and your conversion rates will increase.
- If you don’t match the searchers intent with a relevant landing page, you run a much higher risk of losing that potential customer completely. They will ‘bounce’ back to the search engine results page and click on a competitor’s website instead.
- Also from a technical point of view, the higher the relevancy to the search term the higher your Quality Score will be and the less you should pay per click.
In putting this post together I did a little research on how many accountants who were currently using PPC marketing actually directed visitors to specific landing pages. I checked out 50 companies who were advertising on the Google AdWords platform, I didn’t actually click their ads (there is a way you can view the landing page URL without clicking on an ad), to see how many of them were sending visitors straight to their homepage and how many had sent them to specific landing pages.
To get my results I looked at accountants in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Cardiff for a range of accountancy related services.
Here are my results:
As you can see 90% of the companies that I checked were sending their AdWords visitors directly to their generic homepage, of the 10% that had a specific landing page very few were actually optimised to capture a sales lead.
Paying for traffic via Google AdWords can get very costly so you absolutely must be sure that you are getting the best possible return on your investment, to do this you will have to take the time to set up specific landing pages to suit the keywords you are bidding on. If you direct all of your AdWords clicks to your homepage your conversion rate will be terrible, that’s assuming you are even measuring conversions!
If you would like some advice on how to optimise your marketing efforts, get in touch.
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About the Author – Marketing Man
Marketing Man is a superhero marketer hell bent on a personal crusade to improve the websites and marketing of UK accountancy firms. Check him out on Google+
