Search Engine Advertising and the Importance of Landing Page Optimization

If your company is willing to pay a premium to vie for one of the top three ad spaces that are placed above the google search results, it would be logical to bring the searcher to the relevant page on your site and to have your site be relevant in the first place. As a digital marketing novice, I hadn’t given this concept much thought, but upon further reflection it makes intuitive sense. I set out to put this theory to the test, while also plotting a much needed summer vacation, and conducted a search on “vacations to…” various European cities.

When it came to London, this concept lined up very nicely. The top google ad was one by Icelandair who brought me directly to their optimized landing page that displayed a casual group of soccer players resting in the shade of a Chelsea side street. While it did not have Buckingham Palace on the first page or the Houses of Parliament either, the site made it obvious that you were very much in the right place. The next two ads by Virgin Atlantic airlines and vacations were equally calibrated, although far less understated, with hero shots of iconic London sites on their landing pages.

Everything seemed to go according to plan, when I decided to try “vacations to Madrid.” I immediately noticed a difference. Not only were the landing pages not optimized, but the ads themselves were not directly related to my search. The ads suggested I visit Paris and London or Cancun instead. The one ad that was relevant listed all of the different places in Spain I could visit and did not have any pictures of landmarks like the Plaza Mayor or the Palacio Real that announced that I had arrived in Madrid.

Needless to say, the user experience for my London search was significantly better. These two searches and associated search engine advertisements perfectly illustrated the value in having an optimized landing page and ads that were relevant to my search. London and Madrid were weighted equally in my mind when I began my search, but the ads that appeared in the London search were far more likely to convert me than their Madrileño counterparts.