Landing pages
Half the campaign is the page.
A good advertisement pointed at a weak page loses money twice: once because fewer people convert, and again because Google counts landing page experience inside the auction, so you pay more per click for the privilege.
Why do ad campaigns need dedicated landing pages?
Because the home page is built for everyone and an advertisement is aimed at one person with one problem. Someone who searched for a specific service and clicked an advertisement promising it should land somewhere that continues that promise, not somewhere they have to navigate.
There is a direct financial effect as well as a conversion one. Google's Ad Rank includes ad and landing page quality, so a slow, generic or mismatched page raises what you pay for every click.
The practical rule is that the page should match the advertisement's promise, load fast, and make the next step obvious within the first screen. Most of the improvement available on a campaign is here rather than in the campaign settings.
Message match is the whole idea
Somebody searched for a specific thing, read an advertisement offering that thing, and clicked. The page has one job: continue that thought without interruption. Every element that does not serve it is costing you.
The failure is usually structural rather than aesthetic. A visitor searching for emergency plumbing lands on a home page carrying six services, a company history, a blog and a newsletter signup, and has to find their own way to the thing they came for. A meaningful share of them do not.
Message match applies to language too. If the advertisement says same day appointments and the page says quality care since 2004, the visitor has to translate. Translation costs attention and attention is what you paid for.
This is also why one page per campaign is the default rather than one page per business. The page is part of the advertisement.
What speed is worth
Google commissioned Deloitte and 55 to measure the effect of mobile load time across 37 brand sites and more than 30 million sessions. It was published in 2020 and remains the largest public study of this question.
SourceMilliseconds Make Millions, Google with Deloitte and 55, 2020, 37 sites and 30M+ sessions
Those are correlations from a 2020 study across large brands, not a promise about your page. What they establish is that on a paid campaign, speed work is conversion work and it pays twice, because the auction rewards it as well.
What actually belongs on the page
In the order a visitor encounters it, which is the only order that matters.
A headline that repeats the promise
The words from the advertisement, or close enough that no translation is needed. If somebody searched for dental implants in Oak Brook, the headline should contain dental implants and Oak Brook. This is not clever and it is the single most effective element on the page.
The next step, visible without scrolling
A phone number that dials with one tap on mobile, or a short form, above the fold. Not a menu of options. One primary action, repeated further down for people who scroll.
The specific reasons to believe
Credentials, licence numbers, insurance accepted, years doing this work, real photographs of the premises and team, genuine reviews. Specific beats superlative every time. Trusted local experts is a phrase anybody can type.
- Real photographs, not stock imagery of a stranger
- Reviews as they were written, attributed as the platform allows
- Concrete credentials rather than adjectives
See the remaining steps: What actually belongs on the pageHide the remaining steps: What actually belongs on the page
The objection the visitor actually has
Usually one of four: how much does this cost, how soon can you see me, do you take my insurance, and will this hurt or be difficult. A page that answers the real objection converts better than one that lists features.
A form asking for as little as possible
Every field costs you submissions. Name, phone and one line about the problem is usually enough to start a conversation. Qualification belongs in the conversation, not in the form.
Nothing else
No site navigation offering six exits, no newsletter signup competing with the enquiry, no autoplaying video, no chat widget covering the call button on mobile. Every additional choice reduces the chance of the one you want.
Most landing pages get better by deletion rather than addition, which is the opposite of how they usually evolve.
What is costing you conversions right now
Open your current landing page on a phone, on mobile data, and go through this list.
- How long until you can read the headline? If it is more than two or three seconds, that is the first problem.
- Is the phone number tappable, or is it an image, or only in the footer?
- Does the headline contain the words somebody searched for, or a slogan?
- How many fields does the form have, and are all of them genuinely needed before a conversation?
- Does the page offer navigation to five other places, giving a visitor five ways to leave?
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- Does a chat widget or a cookie banner cover the call button on a small screen?
- Is there any evidence a real business with real people is behind it, or only stock photography?
- Submit the form yourself. Does anything actually arrive, and how quickly?
- Does the page answer the question you get asked most on the phone, or does it avoid it?
The form test is the one worth doing today. Silently broken forms are more common than any other single failure we find.
Testing honestly at local business volumes
A great deal of conversion advice assumes traffic volumes that most local businesses do not have. A page receiving four hundred visits a month cannot run a statistically valid split test on a headline in any reasonable period, and running one anyway produces a confident conclusion from noise.
What that means practically is that we make changes based on evidence rather than on tests, and we say which is which. Known usability principles, recordings of real sessions, what people actually ask on the phone, and the search terms that produced the click are all evidence. A two week A/B test with thirty conversions is not.
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Where volume does support testing, we test one substantial change at a time rather than a button colour. Headline, offer, form length and page structure are worth testing. Micro copy on a button is not, at these volumes.
The other honest option at low volume is sequential comparison: change the page, watch a month against the previous month with similar spend, and accept that the read is directional. It is imperfect and it is better than pretending the arithmetic worked.
Landing page, service page, or home page
There is a real decision here and the answer is not always a dedicated page.
| Item | Point ads here when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Dedicated landing page | The offer is specific and the campaign is significant | Maintenance, and pages drifting out of date |
| Existing service page | The page is already good, fast and focused | Navigation and other services distracting the visitor |
| Home page | Brand campaigns where people searched for you by name | Almost every other case |
A well built service page frequently outperforms a hastily built landing page, and it has the advantage of also earning organic traffic. The dedicated page wins when the offer is specific enough that the service page cannot carry it.
How this is measured
Conversion rate by page and by device, because mobile and desktop frequently differ enough that an overall figure hides the problem.
Cost per qualified lead before and after a change, which is the number that pays for the work.
Read the full breakdown: How this is measuredHide the full breakdown: How this is measured
Quality Score movement in Google Ads, because landing page experience is a component of it and an improvement there lowers your cost per click as well as raising conversions.
Core Web Vitals from field data, since speed affects both sides of the equation.
And the thing nobody measures: whether the enquiries got better rather than just more numerous. A page that generates twice as many enquiries of half the quality has not helped, and only your follow up records can tell you which happened.
We do not publish a price for this piece of work on its own, because the right scope depends on what already exists. What is published is the bundle pricing: 2,400, 3,600 or 4,800 dollars a month depending on which channels are running. You can read the full breakdown on the pricing page, and you will get an exact number in writing before anything starts.
What changes by industry
Healthcare pages carry constraints that change the copy. Outcome claims are restricted, patient photography needs authorisation, and pages where a visitor identifies a condition raise privacy questions about which tracking scripts should run on them at all.
Legal pages sit under state bar advertising rules affecting testimonials and case results, which limits some of the most effective conversion elements and makes credentials and clarity carry more weight.
Emergency service pages are almost entirely about speed and the phone number. Nobody in that situation reads a value proposition, and a form is frequently the wrong primary action.
High value considered purchases can support a longer page, because the visitor genuinely wants detail before contacting anyone. The mistake is applying that length to an emergency category or the emergency brevity to a considered one.
How this connects to the rest
Landing pages sit under paid advertising because they are part of the campaign rather than a separate website project, and Google's own Ad Rank treats them that way.
They depend on conversion tracking, since a page without measurement cannot be improved deliberately.
They overlap with conversion rate optimisation, which is the same discipline applied across the whole site rather than to a single page, and with website speed optimisation, which is where the load time work happens.
Every paid channel benefits: Google Ads, Meta, YouTube and retargeting all point somewhere, and improving that destination improves all of them at once.
Test your own page on your own phone.
Most of the list above takes five minutes and needs nobody's help. If it comes back clean, bring it to us and we will look at the harder half.
Straight answers.
Can I just send ads to my home page?
You can, and it usually costs you twice: fewer conversions, and a higher cost per click because Google counts landing page experience inside Ad Rank.
The exception is a brand campaign where people searched for your name, in which case the home page is the right destination.
How many fields should a form have?
As few as will let you have a useful conversation. For most local businesses that is a name, a phone number and one line about the problem.
Qualification questions belong in the conversation. Every field you add before it costs you submissions.
Should the page have navigation?
Usually not, or only a logo linking home. Every navigation item is an invitation to leave before doing the one thing the page exists for.
A page that also needs to earn organic traffic is a different case, which is when a well built service page is the better destination.
How long should a landing page be?
As long as the decision requires. An emergency service needs a headline, a phone number and proof you are licensed. A high value considered purchase supports far more, because the visitor wants it.
Length copied from a template in a different category is the common mistake in both directions.
Can we A/B test?
If you have the volume. Most local business pages do not have enough conversions for a valid test in a sensible period, and running one anyway produces confident conclusions from noise.
Where volume is low we make changes based on usability evidence and session recordings, and we tell you plainly that the read is directional rather than statistical.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- About Ad Rank, Google Ads Help (opens in a new tab)
- About Quality Score, Google Ads Help (opens in a new tab)
- Core Web Vitals, web.dev (opens in a new tab)
- PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab)
- WCAG 2 checklist, WebAIM (opens in a new tab)A practical summary of the Level A and AA success criteria.
- FTC truth in advertising (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.