Irrelevant Landing Pages Kill Conversion Rates and Google Adwords Quality Scores

Previously, we discussed about the necessity of web analytics in conversion optimization. We had a look on its significance with conversion, its relationship with CRO and the major keys to consider when going for a strategic approach. On this article, we will be tackling Landing Page relevancy and how we can improve our online presence through specific strategies, since a bad relevancy might kill your Google Adwords quality score as well as your conversion rates.

We have Analytics Ninja‘s Yehoshua Coren, along with Convert, discuss the different analytics strategies on how to improve conversion with Google Analytics as the main web tool. We also discuss how to determine page relevancy and how to improve it. If you want to check out the the full webinar, you can watch it here.

Traffic Source Optimization

After covering all of these essential topics, Coren set his eyes upon the first type of optimization strategy. This approach, considered as a different type of landing page optimization, is called traffic source optimization or landing page relevancy.

[Tweet “With source optimization, you get the right people landing on the right pages”]

Coren explored three sites in Google regarding wedding shoes. He cited some relevant things like great calls to action, simplified designs, and user-friendly access. However, on the last site he visited, there was no mention of the shoes, but they actually had a better landing page than the previous sites. So how did it become relevant enough to pop in Google when you search for wedding shoes?

How to Determine Page Relevancy

Using Google Analytics you can find how SEO can become an issue. Once the issue is found by doing some on-page and off-page SEO work, they can get the right page to index and thereby improve conversion on the site. This was probably how the last site was able to gain such relevancy despite not having the keyword in their landing page.

A brilliant example to determine page relevancy is to do a weighted sort by bounce rate. You can see, based on the algorithm, that the pages which are getting enough visits that are considered mathematically worth enough to take a look at. These can be done instead of PPC. The take away for PPC would be to pause campaigns to save some money. All of these are considered as research on how people are getting into your site. Take a look at which landing page you are sending people into. It’s important to determine your page relevancy and then do something to improve it.

Improving Relevancy

In terms of improving relevancy, Coren urges us to use custom report when using Google Analytics. Think of it in terms of A, B, and C. He takes this from Avinash Kaushik’s Framework of Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes. It is a bit easier to remember just Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions. Based on the framework, here are the questions we need consider when optimizing our traffic source:

1. Acquisition. What are we doing to attract traffic to the website?
2. Behavior. What happens after they land on the website?
3. Conversions. What is the impact on our business – online and offline?

On the post, Kaushik expands on how this framework can help with relevancy:

“You’ll choose to focus on the micro group that is of value to you, and just to you, in each category. You’ll apply those segments to web analytics reports where you hope to find insights (and if you choose the right segments you will!)”

You should remember that getting the right people to the right pages of your site is important in terms of boosting your conversion. Whether it’s through organic search or paid search, you can use analytics to improve the quality of traffic coming to your site, and the relevancy of your landing pages. To view Coren’s full presentation, click here.