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Raise Your Quality Score and Save Money with Fast-Loading Landing Pages Christine Churchill KeyRelevance.com Dallas, TX - Aug 12, 2008

Google AdWords strives to display ads that are relevant and provide a positive user experience. One of the techniques Google uses to accomplish this is by calculating a Quality Score for the advertiser's keyword and landing page. Advertisers with high Quality Scores are rewarded by lowering the minimum bid price and allowing their ad to show higher on the page for a given bid.

Many factors that affect the Quality Score -- a new component added in Spring of 2008 is landing page download time.

You can reduce the download time of your landing pages by practicing the 3 S's of Speedy Landing Pages:

• Keep it Small
• Keep it Simple
• Keep it Static

Keeping Landing Pages Small

Remove page bloat. The more bytes a server has to deliver, the longer it takes for the page to load. A variety of things contribute to page size. Is your page layout complicated? Is legacy code that is commented out instead of removed? Do you have large blocks of JavaScript or CSS in your pages?

All of these things can add seconds to your download time. Remove unneeded legacy code. Streamline your HTML to remove all unnecessary code. WYSIWYG editors are especially bad about injecting unneeded code. The more data you can either eliminate or push to an external file, the better your Quality Score will be.

Put your images on a diet. Frequently you can reduce the file size of huge graphics without any loss of image quality by optimizing them through a graphics program. One free on line graphics optimizer that allows you to view different compressions of an image is GIFbot (http://www.netmechanic.com/products/GIFbot_FreeSample.shtml). In addition to optimizing the size of a graphics file, consider reducing the number of graphics on the page. While Google is not factoring image size in the Quality Score today, they plan to, and optimized images will optimize the user experience as well.

Keeping Landing Pages Simple

Avoid the middleman. Avoid using multiple redirects or meta refreshes that slow down the delivery time of your landing page. Interstitial pages that force the visitor to wait for a page annoy the user and can also hurt your Quality Score.

Keep your server up to speed. Don't let an overloaded server slow you down and detrimentally affect page download time. Monitor your server to find out if this is an issue. If it is, consider moving your site to a faster, more capable server. Consider using a dedicated server to serve your landing pages, if necessary.

Keeping Landing Pages Static

Dynamic content drags down delivery. Does your page pull information from a database server? Dynamic pages take longer to generate and can slow your page load. Consider using static content promoting your top sellers on the landing page and allow the user to see the dynamic information on subsequent pages.

Reducing Load Time Puts Money In Your Pocket

Since the Quality Score affects the bid price you pay and the position in which your ad is shown, improving your Quality Score can save you money. Reducing the download time on your landing page can improve your Quality Score, the users' experience, and help put a little jingle back in your jeans.

Christine Churchill is the President of KeyRelevance.com, a full service search engine marketing company offering search engine optimization, web analytics, and pay per click management.