Which landing page is used to calculate "Landing Page Experience" of a keyword in Adwords?

[fguru]

In Google Adwords, one ad group can have multiple landing pages, yet keywords are shared.

So when I look at the keywords, they use one of the landing pages from ads, but which one?

Shall we create separate ad groups and set only one landing page per group to avoid this problem? If this is the way then how come landing page is not a shared property like the keywords in ad groups?

I hope someone with enough Google Adwords experience can help me here.

Thanks,

[donford]

Google evaluates the landing page as the page you link to in that keywords specific ad.

So, what I did. Was create a list of keywords I want to advertise for for each of my pages. (Example attached)

Then I named the ad group the name of the name of the landing page like custom-rubber-compounds.html

Keywords: rubber compound, custom compounds, compounding process

Now all these keywords are linked to our custom-rubber-compounds.html page. Since they all use the same ad Google evaluates that landing page for each keyword.

You should also read Will Craig's post about Quality Scores here on SEOmoz if you're seeing below normal ratings and what it really means.

[fguru]

Thanks a lot, if this is the common usage it seems like Adwords designed horribly. It's still not clear which landing page it takes if there are multiple landing pages but I understand the workaround is sticking with one landing page per adgroup, I wonder why that's not mandatory as design.

[Branden_S]

landing page experience is calculated from the destination url...however the are 2 destination urls..one at the text ad level and the other at the keyword level.  The reason adwords allows this is to allow flexibility for the advertiser.  For example, you might have 1 ad group for Shoes.  all keywords in this group behave similarly, similar CPC, conversion rate, etc....Keyword  red shoes point to dest url of www.domain.com/redshoes.    However keyword blue shoes point to www.domain.com/blueshoes. You can still have these keywords in 1 ad group, with different destination urls if you set destination url at the keyword level.

Keyword destination url trumps text ad url.

I assume you are concerned with Quality Score, since you are looking at Landing page experience..... You really need to focus on Click Thru Rate, since this is the primary metric used to determine Quality Score.

[fguru]

Thanks, but I don't see anyway to setup a landing page based on the keyword. How can I do that?

Secondly this is a new campaign so we don't have a CTR at all at the moment, should we just launch like this and optimize as we go?

[JasmineA]

When you are setting up your columns in the Keywords tab, there should be an addtional "Destination URL" option. You can pull this column to the top of the list (for ease of sight) and assign a specific URL to the keyword.

You can also do this in the AdWords Editor which for me is easier than dealing with the interface.

[fguru]

Great, it's super complicated Thanks for pointing out that feature.

[Branden_S]

learn to use the editor...its much faster than the UI.

when you first launch a campaign, you will start out with a quality score of 5....middle of the road.   i recommend starting out with exact, phrase & broad modified match types....leave broad match paused.   broad match will generate lots of impressions that are only 'somewhat related' to your keyword...this will in turn lower you ctr, conversion rate & quality score.

also start out with high bids that keep you ads above position 3.  you want to start out on top of the page and with a high ctr and high quality score.  then as time goes by, you can lower bids for non performing keywords.  its much better to start with a high quality score, than to start out low and work your way up.  this costs a little in the short term, but will benefit you in the long run