With all the anxiety about landing page quality score, and because one of the key factors of good landing page quality score is relevance, it might be nice to know exactly what Google thinks your landing page – or your site is about, right? Enter the site tool.
Its been there all along, a radio button away from the popular Google keyword tool, and actually its part of the keyword tool.
It looks like this:
If you enter a path to the landing page, it will give you back data like this:
If you were sending traffic to a page, you’d want every main keyword you were sending to that page to appear in the links below. For example, according to Google this landing page is good for searching resulting from when someone queries “betta fish” or “beta fish”. If I was sending people who searched for “betta breeding” to this page, I’d have a problem with relevancy for this page according to Google, because that keyword doesn’t appear in the green bar after “showing keywords grouped by these terms:”.
Its a really good idea to check every landing page you use this way, to make sure the keyword searches you’re sending to the page match what Google thinks the page is about. Landing pages are given a pass/fail rating within the Google system, so you could be doing everything right with your keyword and adgroup selection and setup, and in the writing of your ads, but if a Google reviewer doesn’t like your site, you’re basically blocked from bidding on that keyword because of a poor landing page. I say “basically blocked” because even with a quality score of 3, you’re still able to pour money into the clicks, but unless you have an amazing business model you’ll just be losing money over time.
Also keep in mind that while its good to have a relevant landing page, its not everything. Your page also needs to be “transparent”, which needs you have to put navigation links on the page – Google does NOT want you to block a user’s natural wandering through your site, even if that interferes with your sales process. Putting the navigation links at the top of the page, rather than hiding them at the bottom, seems to help. Finally, don’t get too hypey on your landing page. Google is looking for trust-worthy advertisers who deliver value and are going to be around for a long time. If you wouldn’t send you grandmother to your landing page, chances are the Google rep doesn’t want to send her grandmother there either.
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