While a well-structured account and compelling Expanded Text Ads are essential, they become meaningless without optimized landing pages. If your landing pages are subpar, you’re essentially paying for prospects to click your ads and leave disappointed, except for a small captivated group. Conversely, even with excellent landing pages aligned with your ad copy and account structure, conversions might not translate into customers for reasons unknown.

It’s common knowledge that high-converting landing pages require attractive offers, compelling value propositions, and efficient live chat support. Additionally, countless aesthetic adjustments, such as color, font, image, and layout tweaks, can be made and A/B tested for optimal performance. While these continuous optimizations can lead to improved conversion metrics, today’s focus is on immediate, tangible changes that your competitors might be overlooking. I consulted with paid search experts on our marketing team for actionable landing page optimization tips that can be readily implemented. Let’s explore them.

PPC Landing Page Tip #1: Use Honeypots to Trap Bots

Unless you’re familiar with FBI stings, the term “honeypot” might be new. It’s essentially a code snippet embedded in your landing page form to combat spam bots. While CAPTCHA is a more familiar solution, it presents a significant user experience hurdle.

I can’t recall a single CAPTCHA I solved on the first attempt (and I doubt I’m alone), and even its user-friendly, one-click cousin, reCaptcha, is useless. CAPTCHAs are the bane of my online existence, and I’m not the only one. Your meticulous design tweaks and CTA tests might be undermined by CAPTCHA, as it can deter potential customers who would have otherwise converted.

This is where the honeypot technique proves beneficial. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of honeypots until Sam, one of our senior account strategists, presented a case study involving her email collaboration client, Zimbra. Addressing the Problem Zimbra faced a significant challenge.

Their free trial landing pages were attracting a large number of bots, resulting in useless conversions. While CAPTCHAs helped reduce bot traffic, they also discouraged legitimate prospects from completing the form.

Sam suggested, “A simple honeypot implementation involves adding a hidden ’test_email’ field alongside the regular ’email’ field in your form. Bots will fill both, while human users won’t even notice it.” By filtering leads with completed ’test_email’ fields and excluding their IP addresses, you can focus on genuine leads. Implementing the honeypot on Zimbra’s trial pages resulted in a higher account-wide conversion rate compared to the previous CAPTCHA-based landing pages (see graph above). The most significant benefit? The conversions were from actual humans, eliminating spam and maximizing deal opportunities. “Allen, how can I implement a honeypot on my landing page?” Surprisingly, it’s quite simple. Honeypots exploit the predictability of bots. Therefore, the hidden fields added to your form don’t need to be complex. Here’s an example:

By incorporating a display: none CSS rule, the form remains hidden from human users, and you’re good to go. If you’re using WordPress, plugins like Contact Form 7 Honeypot simplify the process further, letting you bypass the coding aspect altogether. Additionally, you can exclude known spam bot IP addresses within AdWords, preventing them from seeing your ads after being caught by the honeypot. Navigate to the Settings tab of the desired campaign and locate “Advanced Settings.” Under “IP exclusions,” click the edit button.

Within the “IP Address Exclusion” interface, paste the IP addresses of identified spam bots. You can add up to 500 per campaign.

PPC Landing Page Tip #2: Rethink Your Customer Reviews

The first tip presented a logical approach to deterring bots without affecting user experience. However, the next suggestion might seem counterintuitive. You might be thinking, “Remove customer reviews?! Are you crazy?” Bear with me – it’ll make sense soon. Showcasing curated social proof that highlights positive customer experiences on your landing pages can be incredibly effective. It provides the reassurance that some prospects need. However, indiscriminately displaying all your unfiltered customer reviews on your landing page can be counterproductive.

When every impression counts, negative reviews can be detrimental. Addressing the Problem Enthusiastic customers leave reviews, while satisfied ones might not. Conversely, dissatisfied or unhappy customers are more likely to leave negative reviews. Alarmingly, fan experience expert Ruby Newell-Legner states that it takes twelve positive customer experiences to compensate for a single unresolved negative one. Senior account strategist Chris Panetta witnessed this scenario affect one of his clients:

In 2015, we averaged 219 sales monthly at a $52 CPA before implementing the review system. Initially, the system’s impact was positive. Our CPA decreased by 10-15%, conversions increased, and overall traffic quality improved. However, things deteriorated rapidly after the second month. CPA skyrocketed, conversions plummeted, and we were baffled. Six months later, the CPA was still climbing, exceeding $80. As a last resort, we decided to remove the on-site reviews for 2-3 weeks. Surprisingly, it worked! Within three weeks, CPAs dropped to $65 and were on track to reach $55 again.

Chris discovered that while aggregated customer reviews were excellent, individual product pages told a different story. Many customers missed or misunderstood the 2-4 week production and 10 business day shipping timeframe for the handmade-to-order products. Consequently, they vented their frustrations in product reviews instead of contacting the company directly. Prospects, upon seeing these negative reviews, sought alternatives. Yikes.

To emphasize the potential downsides of unfiltered customer reviews on PPC landing pages, consider the product “Subtle Butt” [insert chuckle].

Subtle Butt markets it as “a disposable gas neutralizer” to eliminate unpleasant odors associated with flatulence. Interestingly, their landing page lacks customer reviews. Clicking the (bright green) “Buy Now” button leads to an ecommerce page that also lacks reviews. Now, this seems like a product that could benefit from testimonials…. And if you visit Amazon, you’ll find over 200 reviews! Ranging from this #evangelist:

to pages of this:

While negative reviews constitute only 21% of total Amazon reviews for Subtle Butt, their severity might discourage potential buyers. While this example is extreme, the underlying message remains relevant. Customer reviews can significantly impact your conversion volume, regardless of your business size. Shooting yourself in the foot by displaying negative reviews is counterproductive, especially when you’re paying for clicks. “But Allen, my customer reviews are excellent!”

If you insist on featuring customer reviews, do so on a separate page not targeted by paid traffic. Create a dedicated testimonial page and test its effectiveness as a sitelink extension. Here’s an excellent example from online coding bootcamp Thinkful:

They’ve compiled over 200 bootcamp reviews from two platforms, with a predominantly positive sentiment (Course Report ranks Thinkful as the top coding bootcamp). Notably, except for selected quotes, these reviews are absent from Thinkful’s PPC landing pages. The takeaway? Curate customer reviews before showcasing them on your landing pages, even if all feedback has been positive.

PPC Landing Page Tip #3: Ensure Your Landing Pages Load Blazingly Fast

Google favors fast-loading landing pages because users do too. Consequently, slow-loading pages (on desktop or mobile) can negatively impact your account performance. Google clearly states that Ad Rank is impacted by site speed, ultimately affecting your Quality Scores and CPC.

What does this imply? A slow landing page can increase your average CPC, while a very slow one might prevent you from entering auctions altogether or force you to pay exorbitant CPCs for ineffective clicks. Addressing the Problem According to Meg Lister, nexus-security’s web optimization manager, “site speed is crucial for organic rankings, but it significantly impacts paid search as well. Research indicates that users become dissatisfied and are more likely to abandon a website that takes over 3 seconds to load.” It’s called “pay per click” advertising, not “pay each time your landing page loads.” Meg further emphasizes that slow load times can “reduce brand trustworthiness, particularly for software or technology companies.” As discussed earlier, jeopardizing trust, especially with paid traffic, is detrimental. “Allen, I’m unsure about my landing page load times. What should I do?” Improving landing page speed isn’t a one-time effort but rather a continuous process. Start by analyzing one of your landing page URLs using the PageSpeed Insights tool.

You’ll receive a score and a detailed summary outlining areas for improvement. The report resembles this:

While some suggestions might require a web developer’s expertise, here are five quick fixes to improve landing page load times:

• Optimize images for web (resizing significantly reduces load times. Here’s a link to a free tool you can use to resize your images)
• Minimize plugin usage
• Use rich media (images, gifs, videos) judiciously
• Upgrade your hosting
• Fix broken links After implementing these changes, re-evaluate your landing page using the PageSpeed Insights tool. Your prospects and budget will appreciate the effort!