The Ultimate Guide to PPC Landing Pages

How do you know if your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) landing pages are making the most of your valuable clicks? We created this comprehensive and convenient guide to show you how to measure and analyze the effectiveness of your landing pages for PPC campaigns. Get the fundamentals of how PPC campaigns and landing pages work together to create a seamless, unified experience for advertising traffic, leveraging a customized landing page experience that improves engagement and conversion rate.. Keep this guide handy as a reference for tips and insights for all of your PPC landing page campaigns. Below are helpful FAQs, best practices, and examples of useful ways to analyze PPC landing page effectiveness. Let’s get started with the basics.

FAQs for PPC Landing Pages

What are PPC Landing Pages?

PPC landing pages are web pages deliberately designed for web traffic from advertising campaigns. Major advertising platforms include Google Ads (Search, Display, Video) and social media ads (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). What’s unique about PPC landing pages is that they are specifically designed and optimized for ad traffic so that the message on your landing page has high relevance to the users that clicked on the ad. The goal of PPC landing pages are to generate leads (B2B) or purchases (B2C).

Leads are generated from landing page visitors performing a specific action (CTA), such as filling out a form to download a gated asset, registering for a webinar, requesting a demo, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase. Effective landing pages are typically minimalist in design and have only one clear CTA. SEO and PPC strategies can go hand in hand. To learn more, check out this guide on how to SEO a landing page. We’ve also got a handy guide on getting started with Google Ads.

Why use Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns?

There are many benefits to using landing pages for PPC campaigns. Here are some of the top advantages:

• Improved Tracking and Measurement: The ability to view the PPC traffic metrics of your landing pages allows you to measure how page visitors are interacting with the elements of the page and the overall effectiveness of your campaign. Are visitors spending time in areas of the page that are distracting them from converting? This may be a signal that the page design and content should be more minimal. Are visitors clicking on other links instead of converting? You might consider reducing lead generating links. Measurement and analysis are paramount to getting the best performance out of your PPC campaign landing pages.
• Better Ad Relevance: The visitor experience is critical to deriving the desired action you wish them to take. The stronger the relevance between the ad campaign and the landing page, the better chance you will have of converting the ad traffic. Enhanced user experience and ad relevance can improve Google Ads Quality Score, which can impact campaign costs and ad rank.
• Higher Conversion Rates: Consistency in the messaging and creative design of the ad campaign and the landing page itself provides a unified experience and leads to higher conversion rates versus sending campaign traffic to a homepage or generic core site page.

PPC Landing Page Best Practices

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into the best practices for using landing pages for PPC campaigns. Below is a handy checklist to guide you along your PPC landing page journey.

Best Practices PPC Landing Page Checklist:

• Audience Research: The first step to creating a winning PPC landing page is to identify the audience that you will be targeting on paid media platforms and create a strong synergy between your ad creative (visual and copy) and the message on the landing page. The more relevant your message is to the ad audience the more likely they are to click and then be motivated to take action on your landing page because you clearly understand the pain points, needs, and solutions the audience is looking for. Critical to achieving this is using paid search target keywords both in your ad copy and on the landing page, this will ensure synergy between ads and the page content and even help improve your Google keyword quality score.
• Compelling Creative: Use relevant high-quality images, videos, and/or graphics to bring your PPC landing page content to life. The more relevance, the better. Landing page visuals are closely tied to the page design, so similarly, consider creative elements to be dedicated solely to deriving a single desired action from page visitors. Additionally, the use of high quality video content can drastically improve the effectiveness of your landing page.
• Minimalist Design: Let’s start here as PPC landing page design is a critical first step and you will want to kick things off correctly.  You almost always want paid traffic to take a singular action on the landing page, and every element of the landing page design should be dedicated to deriving that action from page visitors. You can think of it as an inverted pyramid where all of the content leads to a single point: the conversion event. Page layouts should be clean, clear, and concise to reduce any distractions. Aim to quickly lead page visitors to the CTA while using any elements along the way to guide them.

• Robust Headline: Here’s your chance to grab visitors’ attention with a compelling headline that entices them to stay on the page and engage further. Headlines need to be aligned with the ad campaign messaging that delivered them to your landing page in order to provide a unified experience. Restating the offer that the ad featured assures visiting ad traffic that they are on the correct web page tied to the value proposition in the ad.
• Concise Content: Here is your chance to expand on the ad campaign’s value proposition that enticed your landing page visitors in the first place. If your ad gets them to click through to your landing page, the content on your landing page needs to persuade them to want even more. Remember to include the same keywords used in your ad on the landing page. Page design, headlines, and creative elements are all components of the page content so keep the same principles in mind – when it comes to PPC landing pages, less is more.
• Social Proof: Whether you use customer quotes, testimonials, case studies, and/or reviews, these elements reinforce a sense of trust in page visitors who see similar industry practitioners and peers who have expressed a positive experience with the asset, product, or service being advertised. Learn more about leveraging social proof in this insightful blog from WordSteam.
• Call-to-Action (CTA): CTAs are typically a button that clearly indicates the desired action. CTAs are found at the bottom of a form, a purchase confirmation, or other type of information collection component. PPC landing page CTA buttons are often, “Download”, “Sign Up”, or “Buy Now”. All roads should lead to your CTA. Learn more CTA do’s and don’ts in this guide from SearchEngineJournal.
• Optimize for Mobile: Your PPC landing page needs to be fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices to ensure all device (smartphones and tablets) formats provide a seamless user experience. Consider this: in 2023, the popular keyword planning tool SEMrush measured 313% more visits on mobile compared to desktop for the top 100 most visited websites in the U.S. Make sure mobile optimization is a priority.
• A/B Testing: A/B testing allows you to try different elements of the page design including the layout, the headline, images, and CTAs to identify which elements or combination of elements best resonate with your audience to derive the desired action.

PPC Landing Page Examples

Below are a few examples of ads (Google Search in this example) and their corresponding PPC landing pages: 

HubSpot

The CRM Platform HubSpot’s Search ad uses clear and compelling PPC landing page copy to entice prospects searching for a trusted CRM platform. With compelling keywords such as “Generate leads”, “Close deals”, and “grow your business”, we have a sense of confidence that HubSpot is an effective CRM solution.

HubSpot PPC Landing Page

Monday

The much-advertised task management platform Monday’s Search ad uses direct keywords that align to a search for a task manager and includes “Free” to further entice prospects.

Monday PPC Landing Page

Barracuda Networks

The IT security company Barracuda Google Search ad uses relevant keywords, social proof, and a low-risk free trial offer. 

Barracuda PPC Landing Page

While these pages may not all completely adhere to all best practices for PPC landing pages, they do get the most important thing correct. Each page is solely dedicated to generating CTA conversions from visiting ad traffic. Find more examples of B2B and B2C PPC landing pages in this guide from HubSpot.  

As you incorporate dedicated landing pages into your PPC campaign strategies, keep these insights and best practices in mind and you will find greater success in your campaign performance. 

Now that we have covered the basics of “what is a PPC landing page?”, best practices, and a few PPC landing page examples, it’s time to understand how to measure PPC landing page effectiveness. Below we will dive into PPC landing page measurement in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

How to Measure PPC Landing Page Effectiveness in GA4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a valuable tool for marketers who want to measure website traffic, engagements, and conversions. Today, most activities that involve a website and especially landing pages are measurable in the platform. GA4 is the most common and accessible platform to view and analyze website and webpage performance. 

When measuring website effectiveness, GA4 metrics provide valuable insights into the performance of PPC landing pages. Here’s how to measure effectiveness:

• UTM Parameters: Using UTM parameters is a method of tracking that allows you to get more granular by measuring specific campaign, ad group, and creative data. With UTMs you can measure and analyze the performance of any of these fields.
• Behavior Flow Analysis: Here you can analyze the behavior flow of your PPC traffic. Analyzing these metrics can help identify drop-off points or other elements that distract page visitors from converting. Use these metrics to conduct Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) aimed at improving page conversion performance.
• Track Conversions: This is where you will keep track of conversion-related metrics including total conversions, conversion rate, and conversion value. Comparing multiple PPC landing page conversion metrics against each other can provide insights into what works best for your target audience. If needed, learn how to set up GA4 conversion tracking.
• Landing Page Engagement: Here you can measure and analyze specific landing page metrics including page visits, sessions, average session duration, pages per session, and conversion metrics. These insights reveal page visitor engagement and overall page effectiveness.
  • Landing Page UX/UI: Tools such as CrazyEgg provide heatmaps, click maps, scrollmaps, recordings, and other visual reports to show you exactly how your page visitors are responding and engaging to elements on your site. Use A/B testing to validate the best combinations and variations of page elements.
    

What PPC Landing Page Metrics are Most Important? 

As discussed above, there are a variety of metrics that help marketers assess the performance of PPC landing page campaigns. Google Analytics provides all of the relevant metrics you will need to measure and analyze your landing page effectiveness. 

How to find landing page metrics in GA4:

Navigate to landing page metrics by signing into GA4, selecting the appropriate Analytics Account and Property. This will open your GA4 dashboard. On the left-side rail, select the Reports icon , and then under Life cycle, click the Engagement dropdown and select Landing page. We select Landing page because you want to see the first page from your website that the traffic landed on (vs navigating from another site page). 

Entering your landing page URL in the Search bar allows you to look at the performance for that specific landing page. Keep in mind that this includes traffic from any source – not just PPC. You can segment the landing page data in the table by paid traffic by leveraging the UTM data used on all ads by adding a secondary dimension (“+”) of “session source / medium” (utm_source / utm_medium), “session campaign” (utm_campaign), “session manual ad content” (utm_content). Additionally, you can filter the table view to only show specific ad traffic metrics using these same parameters from UTMs – the filter is just under the main title of the GA4 report. 

Google Analytics (GA4) Metrics:

• Users: Users measure the total number of page visitors who landed on your landing page without already being on your site. It makes sense that this is the first page the user has landed on, being sent from an offsite ad campaign.
• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who navigated away from your landing page without interacting with any other pages on your site. Lower bounce rates can indicate strong landing page relevancy and user engagement. However, since you want the visiting ad traffic to take one action on the PPC landing page, you may actually see higher bounce rates. If the visitor arrives and quickly converts, they’ll be considered a quick bounce, which in this case is a good thing! 
• Average Engagement Time: This measures the average engagement time per user during the selected date range. If users are staying on the page for long periods of time but not converting, consider minimizing the page elements to eliminate distractions. Experts agree, even the website navigation bar at the top of these pages can be considered a distraction. You might also change the position or look of your CTA to be higher or more prominently positioned on the page. A/B test these elements to find the best performing set up.
• Conversions: This is the Holy Grail of your PPC landing page metrics and the key point of lead capture. Conversions are the analytics goals completed from your CTA such as clicking the download button or completing a purchase after filling out a form. The higher rate of conversions from ad traffic signals that your landing page is doing its job.

Tips on PPC Landing Page Optimization

As you measure the performance of your PPC landing pages, A/B test page elements and analyze results. The more you learn about how your visiting ad traffic engages with your page, the better you can optimize for greater results.

Here are a few handy tips to keep in mind when optimizing your PPC landing pages for best performance:

• Relevancy: Learn as much as you can about your target audience and tailor page content based on their motivations, pain points, and motivational drivers.
• Keyword Alignment: Matching keywords used in Search and Display campaign targeting with keywords used in the page copy reinforces the relevancy of your landing page content and improves ad relevance and quality score.
• Ongoing Testing and Experimenting: Regularly test landing page elements to identify the best performing combinations of copy, visuals and any other supporting elements. Try out different layouts, images, headlines, copy blocks, and CTAs. Experiment with seasonal or business-cycle related themes if it makes sense for your audience.  
• Heat Mapping: Another valuable tool for measuring landing pages is heat mapping. A heat map provides a visual copy of your landing page and overlays color marks to indicate areas of the page that get the most visitor attention. Tools such as CrazyEgg and HotJar analyze visitor journeys and drop off points to help identify areas of optimization. A/B test page elements and use heat mapping tools to find the best performing combinations.
• Conduct Research and Gather Feedback: Review competitor landing pages and consider what’s working for them. Are they using a minimalist style?, do they reinforce the value proposition with social proof? Is the CTA clear and well positioned? Think of how you can stand out from the pack.

In Summary

Keep the insights from this guide top of mind when you analyze PPC landing pages as they are crucial for getting the most out of your paid advertising campaigns. By following the best practices for landing page setup, measuring effectively with Google Analytics, and employing ongoing optimizations, you can ensure you are giving your campaign opportunities to drive the best conversion rates, improve ad and landing page relevance, and maximize the ROI from your PPC campaigns. Monitor landing page performance regularly, test various page elements, and adapt your approach based on data-driven insights to ensure ongoing success.