In order to get the most out of any PPC campaign, it’s important that the ad and landing page contain some or all of the search terms being used. Since I’ll be setting up a campaign that targets people searching or browsing for information on Laura Hillenbrand’s new book Unbroken, I need to create a specific landing page that contains these search terms. It’s not enough to just add the search terms to the meta keywords. You have to have the search terms on the page. The closer the match between search phrase, ad, and landing page, the better the quality score and the lower the cost per click. It also makes sense. You don’t want to mislead anyone. Taking users to a landing page that doesn’t even mention the keywords or keyword phrases being searched is likely to lead to high bounce rates and wasted clicks.
The answer to this dilemma is to create what’s known as a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a landing page designed specifically to solicit some response from the person visiting the page. This typically would involve a product order, service request, or subscriber invitation. In my case, the goal of the squeeze page is to simply get the person visiting the page to go deeper into the site and ultimately place an order. I also want to satisfy Google’s guidelines.
The squeeze page will also allow me to track how users are responding. The only way to reach the squeeze page is by clicking on an ad. It’s not accessible by menu or sitemap. So I’ll be able to tell exactly what happens once someone lands on the page. My guess is that I will have a bounce rate in the 80% to 90% range. But if I can get 10% to 20% of visitors to go further into the site, then I’ll consider my efforts a success. That will mean that I have exposed my book to two to three people a day who otherwise would not have been aware of the book. If few people go beyond the squeeze page, then the entire experiment will prove fruitless.
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