When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), our team routinely emphasizes how important it is to create high quality, keyword-focused content for each optimized page. We help our clients develop unique content that appeals to both human visitors and the search engines.

This same concept is equally important to your Search Engine Advertising (SEA) campaigns. Search engines earn revenue by placing highly relevant ads on search engine results pages, so they are committed to ensuring a good experience for the people that click on those ads. By placing a high level of importance on the quality and relevance of advertiser landing pages to the search query, the search engines are able to provide users with helpful, accurate results. This also benefits advertisers by ensuring that they deliver on the searcher’s expectations, which should in turn lead to an improved conversion rate.

To help ensure this, the search engines evaluate ads based on a variety of factors. Google's Quality Score system is the most advanced, but the other search engines follow suit. The Quality Score directly impacts your ad's position on results pages along with the cost-per-click you must bid for each keyword. To ensure that your campaign is successful, the ad should be relevant to the keyword, the landing page should load quickly and be of direct relation to the ad, and your site should be easy to navigate. Here’s a close-up look at some of the factors the search engines consider when evaluating your ads’ landing pages:

Highly Relevant to Ad Copy
Your ad should take the user to the page on your site that is directly related to their search query. This means that not only should the landing page include mentions of the keywords that you bid on, but most of the content on that page should provide substantial information about that keyword or topic.

Ease of Navigation
Do you have an uncluttered navigation bar and easy-to-read text? These are all elements that Google looks for in a high quality site. So you’ll want to design your landing pages so their appearance and navigational elements are consistent with the rest of your site. That way, users can easily navigate between the landing page, other product pages, the shopping cart (for eCommerce sites), and other conversion-orientated pages like your registration or contact pages. This provides a good user experience, improves your Quality Score, and increases the chance that they will visit your site in the future.