SmallBusinessNewz

The biggest search advertising budget in the world won't help the conversion rate if visitors arrive at a landing page that falls below their expectations.

As a small business advertising with the paid search services of Google, Yahoo, or other competitors, the creation of the ad represents the beginning of the campaign. Through adept uses of keyword matching, geotargeting, and daypart scheduling, those ads should start attracting a desired audience.

Once they arrive, what should you do with them? A classic post at Yahoo Search Marketing suggested nine tips on the topic of landing page optimization.

Two concepts stand out: relevance and a call to action. When someone arrives to see your commuter bicycles, for example, the page they arrive at better have commuter bicycles on display.

Those bikes should call out to the visitor, with nice photos, preferably with well-lit zooms available. Product information, options, and pricing need to be at hand to complete the content.

Then the page has to go for the conversion. Two schools of thought come into play. Some advocate strong calls to action: Buy Today, Request More Information, Join The Mailing List. Others suggest a less-direct approach: Try It Now, Learn More.

One approach may work better than the other. One can determine this with observation and A/B testing of two or more landing pages, to see which one draws the best conversion rate.