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Question for AdWords EXPERTS

by dsiomtw
8 replies
I haven't used AdWords in years, but I'm back using it again for a new site. I am getting pretty low quality scores, and I'm trying to figure out why.

The biggest problem according to the AdWords system is a "below average landing page experience", despite my landing pages being extremely relevant and tightly matched to my ad groups.

The one thing I'm wondering about is things like onpage SEO related stuff and general "best practices" which I never really pay any attention to. For example, many of my pages have the same titles and same meta descriptions. I never both to add alt tags to images, etc. etc.

Could this kind of thing lead to the AdWords system saying my pages have a "below average landing page experience"?

My bounce rate is relatively low, my site is legit, my landing pages are targeted to the keywords that lead to them, etc. etc. and I just can't think of anything else.

I did have some broken links on a bunch of pages that I'm sure AdWords didn't like at all, but those were fixed over a week ago. Is it possible that this is still affecting my account negatively?

Help!
#adwords #experts #question
  • Profile picture of the author Ettienne
    I doubt it. Maybe just check your website's loading speed and see what you can improve. A great site to use (and they give solid recommendations) is GTMetrix.com

    Otherwise, it that's not the problem, try doing split tests with different pages or even just different headlines. A headline can make a HUGE difference in CTR
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  • Profile picture of the author dsiomtw
    No my site is faster than 91% of sites according to Google.

    I'm not really worried about my ad's CTR right now, I'm referring to the fact that Google says that for most of my keywords my site provides a "below average landing page experience". I don't believe this is related to my ad's CTR.
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    Originally Posted by dsiomtw View Post

    The one thing I'm wondering about is things like onpage SEO related stuff and general "best practices" which I never really pay any attention to. For example, many of my pages have the same titles and same meta descriptions. I never both to add alt tags to images, etc. etc.
    There's your problem. You are sending a whole lot of different keywords to pages that are very much the same... how can this be a good end user experience? Google will look at this and think how can this page be relevant to all of these keywords at the one time... the simple answer is, it can't. That's why you get a low quality score.

    The proper way to do things is to customize each and every landing page for very small and targeted groups of keywords or even individual keywords. The more targeted the page is to the keyword(s) the better.
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    • Profile picture of the author ebizman
      Originally Posted by WillR View Post

      There's your problem. You are sending a whole lot of different keywords to pages that are very much the same... how can this be a good end user experience? Google will look at this and think how can this page be relevant to all of these keywords at the one time... the simple answer is, it can't. That's why you get a low quality score.

      The proper way to do things is to customize each and every landing page for very small and targeted groups of keywords or even individual keywords. The more targeted the page is to the keyword(s) the better.
      this doesnt make sense he stated in the OP that he's sending keywords that are all related to the landing page...
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      • Profile picture of the author WillR
        Originally Posted by ebizman View Post

        this doesnt make sense he stated in the OP that he's sending keywords that are all related to the landing page...
        Ah, I'm sorry, but when the OP says...

        many of my pages have the same titles and same meta descriptions. I never bother to add alt tags to images, etc. etc.
        then that means the pages are NOT tightly targeted to all the keywords. SEO, including title tags, heading tags, image tags, etc should all be as targeted as possible to the keywords. It's just as important as the onpage content. If you have the same SEO on all pages then they are not targeted. If they were pages on a real website you were trying to rank on Google would you have all the same SEO on each page? No, of course you wouldn't. So this shouldn't be any different.

        Simple.

        If I have a group of keywords such as

        blue widget
        red widget
        small widget
        tall widget

        and I send them all to a landing page about 'widgets' then that is nowhere near as targeted as sending the keyword 'blue widget' to a landing page optimized only for 'blue widgets' and so on.

        The more targeted the page the better the end user experience and the higher your quality score will go as a result.
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        • Profile picture of the author ebizman
          Originally Posted by WillR View Post

          Ah, I'm sorry, but when the OP says...



          then that means the pages are NOT tightly targeted to all the keywords. SEO, including title tags, heading tags, image tags, etc should all be as targeted as possible to the keywords. It's just as important as the onpage content. If you have the same SEO on all pages then they are not targeted. If they were pages on a real website you were trying to rank on Google would you have all the same SEO on each page? No, of course you wouldn't. So this shouldn't be any different.

          Simple.

          If I have a group of keywords such as

          blue widget
          red widget
          small widget
          tall widget

          and I send them all to a landing page about 'widgets' then that is nowhere near as targeted as sending the keyword 'blue widget' to a landing page optimized only for 'blue widgets' and so on.

          The more targeted the page the better the end user experience and the higher your quality score will go as a result.
          oh ok, confusion then

          yup i agree with you!
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  • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
    Guys, the onpage SEO is almost certainly NOT what is causing the problem. AdWords doesn't care about SEO. They care about user experience and users don't care about SEO. As long as he isn't running baseball ads and sending visitors to a Viagra site, he should be fine as long as the content is even closely related to the ads.

    That said, it is nearly impossible for anyone to give OP any meaningful advice without seeing the landing page itself.

    OP: If you are comfortable doing so, PM me the link to your landing page and I can tell you what is wrong with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author dsiomtw
    I don't care about organic rankings in Google, so I'm just lazy and when I create pages I use a template and most pages end up having the same title, description, etc. And I never bother to add ALT tags to images. I know it's a bad habit, but I don't care about SEO so I never bothered to do this stuff the "right" way. That's why I'm asking if it can affect adwords as well ...

    Thanks for the offer wolfmmiii. Here's an example landing page. This is for "website testing" related keywords ...

    http://www.32reviews.com/adw/website-testing/

    The problem might just be that I don't have enough content on my landing pages. My landing pages are very short and sweet and the user must make a selection from 3 options before they get to the "meat and potatoes" of the site. Because of this I haven't artificially added a bunch of extra content to try to make Google's bot happy, but maybe I have to do that. Just seems Google should be smarter than this by now. I shouldn't have to artificially add content to a page that doesn't require it just to advertise on Google on a level playing field ...
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