The elements of a landing page (LP) help reenergize and improve a landing page’s performance.

1. Ad-LP relevance

I discussed this in my last blog under “continuity.” How relevant is your ad’s messaging to your Landing Page? When you have different keywords with lots of ads running, but direct traffic to just a few landing pages, then the relevance to your ad and LP isn’t very good. For example, someone who clicks on a mobile accessories ad is directed to a generic mobile phone page, which is not closely related to the ad. The Ad-LP relevance needs to be more focused and specific.

2. Design

How does your landing page look? When a visitor clicks on your text ad, he or she will reach the LP where you make your first impression. You do not have to be a great graphic designer to create an attractive LP. Instead, you should find a designer who can make a clear LP with quality designs and images. While choosing images, one has to keep in mind that images should only be used on a landing page if it is compelling enough and supports the end goal i.e. conversion. That said, photos of real people are more effective than random images or clipart.

3. Content

A compelling headline: A headline is the first thing that a visitor will see. It should be the most compelling content on the page. The copy should match the search query and paid search ad copy as much as possible. Generally, the closer the match, the higher is the conversion rate. Make sure your ad and your landing page are closely related. You can also add the main keyword to the headline.

Body Copy: Less is often more. Additional copy on the site should not exceed 250 characters. Your value proposition should all be answers to “why?” Keep them limited to three or four bullet points and speak plainly. This is no time to get cute, either. If users cannot quickly and easily understand the benefits of your product or service, they will not hesitate to click the back button.

4. Interactivity

Are your pages with text or non-attractive images, or do you have attractive elements to capture the attention of the visitor? Just keeping an image or bolded text doesn’t make an attractive landing page. In the modern age, animated flash or video clips can be more a convincing to way to attract the visitor’s attention. The secret is to synchronize these elements with your messaging and design.

5. Load Time

Landing pages should load instantly. Users don’t like to wait, and search algorithms deduct quality score for slower pages.

Contributed by Rajasekar Ragavan

Campaign Structure is the foremost thing that makes or breaks an account. This is where you can manage your budgets for your account. The most basic campaign structure is classified into these four campaigns, namely:

Corporate campaign is where you create clusters for your corporate keyword and its variations. In this campaign, you look into the fact whether your corporate keyword appears in your ad and in the landing page.

Core Campaign will have all the clusters of keywords that directly relate to your business. For example, if you are a used-car seller, your Core Campaigns will contain clusters like used-cars, second-hand cars, pre-owned cars, and so on. This is the campaign where you should allocate more budget as this relates to your business directly.

Competitors Campaign will have keywords of all your competitors’. In this campaign, you bid on the same keywords as your nearest competitors who affect your market share. This campaign will allow you to show your ads for competitor keywords, and if there are customers who are not satisfied with your competitors’ service or products, may switch to you if they see your ads are more convincing.

Fringe Campaign will contain keywords not directly related to your business but will contain keywords that are close to it. For example, a used-car seller’s Fringe Campaign could have “car seats,” “car performance kits,” “tires,” and so on. A small budget should be allocated to this, though it is not directly related to your business, it might attract customers who are looking to enhance their car’s performance at a smaller budget. This is where in you can chip in and offer a used-car at a good price.

Now, the question is where all you want your ad to show up. You have  three options: Search, Content and Site-targeted.

Search allows your ad to show up only on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. This is beneficial if you know that your customers search for your product on the World Wide Web.

Content allows your ad to show related content on various sites like forums, community sites or social sites. This can be used when your customers are not aware of your product and research for it on these content sites.

Site-targeted strategy allows your ads to show up on those specific sites where you want to advertise. This can be used for sites you know your customers visit often.

Other than these, you can also use Geo targeting when you are targeting specific geographic regions. In Google, you can target specific cities and its surrounding areas. Language targeting can also be used to target those customers who use certain language-specific search engines.

These are the most basic campaign structures that you should use to create an effective campaign strategy to reach your goals.