Ahhh… The landing page debate.
Please note this page applies to item-specific queries, where a unique identifier is used, for example;
Query – ” Car + model number + year”
When I started in the industry, I was lucky to have learned a few lessons from a fellow named Derrick Kotze – A true pioneer in the AdWords field.
His view was that we should land the web user on the closest exact page for the query.
At the time, his logic was sound;
- Category landing pages yielded less relevance than product-specific
- Relevance is a component of Quality Score
- Therefore, by landing on the closest match, we would achieve a higher Quality Score.
Today, after much trial and error, I disagree with this methodology.
Please note that I am assuming the following;
- Client has moderately functional site search engine.
- Creation of landing pages not to be spammed via URL concatenation. Each checked to ensure category or brand relevance.
- Specific item must appear in the first few results of site search engine output.
O.K.
Now that we have that covered, I will explain why I think a category or client search engine result or category page is better than landing on a product-specific page.
- Web user initially sees more choices of product, however, desired product is on page.
- Therefore, when web user clicks on desired product, any bounce will result in viewing of other offerings.
- Web users like choice. They like having other products “suggested” to them.
- Quality score won’t be as badly affected provided search term forms part of site search query term
Welcome to my parlor..
