How Landing Pages Influence the Quality Score on Every Advertising Platform

Landing pages are often a customer's first interaction with a brand, which sets the tone for their relationship going forward. Reducing the quality score to a single number is misleading for advertisers, as they tend to underestimate the importance of landing pages on certain crucial aspects of a campaign — such as brand perception and positioning.

For context, most advertising platforms use the term "Quality Score", whilst others use "Ad Relevance" or similar terminology. Let us get straight to the point!

What is the Quality Score and Why Does It Matter for CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Campaigns?

The quality score is an approximation of the relevance of your keywords and ads to your target audience. It is generally represented within advertising platforms as a number from 1 to 10. This considerably simplifies the complex, bid-specific data that users may encounter across different ad auction types. Search engines and social media platforms use this metric to decide which ads to serve and how much to charge the advertiser per click or impression.

Google Ads introduced the quality score into its algorithm to reward advertisers who create relevant ads with a lower cost per click. Advertisers who attempt to serve irrelevant ads to uninterested users may receive a lower quality score and must pay a higher cost per click to remain visible.

As you can see from the equation below, delivering an excellent user experience to improve your quality score can improve your ranking (Ad Rank) and reduce your cost per click. As far as we can tell, most platforms use an equation like the one below to determine where your ads appear:

Max CPC x Quality Score = Ad Rank

However, each advertising platform treats landing pages differently within their equations. Savvy advertisers need to understand the nuances of each platform in order to tailor their campaigns for the best possible results. In short, the table below shows the similarities and differences between each major advertising platform's version of the Quality Score, as well as the associated factors:

Source: https://unbounce.com/ppc/how-landing-pages-impact-quality-score/

To put it simply, here are the questions platforms ask themselves when evaluating your ads against these various attributes:

Landing page experience: Does your ad's landing page match the visitor's intent and help them reach their goals quickly and seamlessly?
Click-through/engagement rate: Do your ads receive clicks as often as competing ads?
Ad relevance: Do your ads match the interests and intent of your audience?
Post-click conversion rate: Are visitors likely to convert or take meaningful action after clicking your ad?
Recency: Have your ads been published recently or are they updated regularly?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", there is a strong chance your quality score will suffer.

How Do Landing Pages Influence the Quality Score Across Different Platforms?

Landing pages form an important part of quality score algorithms and, fortunately, they are one of the easiest elements to control in a CPC campaign. The most important part of the "Landing Page Experience" component of the quality score is delivering a positive experience to visitors. Answer their search intent with relevant content, ensure lightning-fast page speed, and make sure your site looks great on all screen sizes.

When well designed, landing pages can have a positive impact on Google Ads quality scores. This means a lower cost per click and higher conversion rates compared to sending traffic to a standard website. And even though some advertising platforms do not explicitly factor landing pages into their quality score calculations, marketers should not overlook the value of improving the visitor experience and increasing the likelihood that visitors will develop a positive association with your brand.

Google Ads

Google Ads support content explicitly mentions the importance of landing pages in creating a positive user experience. I want to emphasise the word "experience", because most people assume that Google Ads quality scores focus solely on landing page relevance. Your landing pages certainly need to be relevant to the keywords and ads on which your visitors clicked — but it is equally important for Google that your landing page loads quickly, is secure, and displays correctly on all screens.

Landing pages do not directly impact expected CTR (click-through rate), but the domain and URL you display in your ads can indirectly help or hinder your click-through rates.

Microsoft Advertising

The quality score for Microsoft campaigns is almost identical to that of Google Ads, though it provides far less documentation. However, Microsoft explicitly states that the landing page experience factor is "based on the number of times customers leave your ad's landing page shortly after arriving" (the bounce rate). This implies that reducing your landing page's bounce rate will improve your quality score.

It is a good idea to monitor your quality score on Microsoft Advertising, but do not expect to gain much useful insight into individual keywords. Follow Google's best practices when attempting to improve your Microsoft quality score, in the hope that it rewards the same efforts.

Facebook Ads

Facebook's ad relevance is a completely different type of metric from Google's quality score. Its three scoring components are as follows:

Quality ranking: A ranking of your ad's perceived quality. Quality is measured using feedback on your ads and the post-click experience. Your ad is ranked against ads competing for the same audience.
Engagement rate ranking: A ranking of your ad's expected engagement rate. Engagement includes all clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Your ad is ranked against competing ads for the same audience.
Conversion rate ranking: A ranking of your ad's expected conversion rate. Your ad is ranked against ads with the same optimisation goal competing for the same audience.

It should be noted that Facebook audience targeting is not based on search keywords. It is therefore much more difficult to determine user intent at any given moment. Many Facebook campaign types also allow users to convert, transact, or engage with content directly within the platform itself. In such cases, Facebook relies heavily on engagement and interactions occurring on its own platform to determine whether an ad is relevant or not.

Although Facebook Ads documentation does not mention external landing pages, it does refer to "post-click experience" and "conversion rate" in two of the three ad relevance factors. Advertisers using Facebook audience and conversion pixels should assume that Facebook Ads can measure engagement and conversion rates on their websites. Adapt your landing pages accordingly.

Twitter Ads

Twitter Ads do not mention landing pages.

Resonance: Is there engagement around your ad? Do people click, like and/or retweet it frequently?
Relevance: Does your Tweet's content match your audience's interests?
Recency: Are your Tweets recent? Twitter represents what is happening right now, which is why the auction rewards fresh content.

Like Facebook Ads, most conversions associated with Twitter Ads occur within the platform itself, in the form of likes, retweets, content engagement, and new followers. If Twitter considers engagement, conversions, or landing page experience as a factor, it does not appear to significantly influence campaign performance.

That said, pairing your Twitter ads with dedicated landing pages remains a good idea if you want to re-engage and convert site visitors. Even the best Twitter advertising campaigns will not reach their full potential if your landing pages do not reinforce the positioning (and offers) you are tweeting about.

LinkedIn Ads

Oh, LinkedIn. Nothing is straightforward with LinkedIn Ads, including determining your campaign quality score. Like other platforms, LinkedIn evaluates each sponsored content campaign on a scale of 1 to 10. Unlike other platforms, it does not let you view the campaign quality score unless you manually export a .csv file of your historical performance.

Once you have followed the laborious eight-step procedure to export your scores, you will find a number in the "Campaign Quality Score" column — but no insight or further detail on how to improve it.

Without this information, the best advice I can offer is to focus on improving your ads' click-through rate and engagement (likes, shares, etc.). Landing pages are not mentioned. If you are sending ad traffic to an external website, follow the best practices shared by other platforms and put your users' experience first. At worst, this will improve your conversion rates. At best, it could improve your campaign quality score and reduce LinkedIn Ads' notoriously high CPCs.

Pay Attention to Your Quality Score — Without Becoming Obsessed by It

There are several proven methods for improving your quality score through landing pages. Most focus on improving the visitor experience and do not require significant developer support.

Your landing pages influence your quality score — both directly and indirectly. But the algorithms are opaque, making it impossible to know exactly what works and what does not. We have found that results vary considerably by sector and campaign type. I recommend treating the score as an indicator (rather than a primary metric) of your efforts. Set reminders to review your landing page experience scores once a month or per quarter. Look for progress.

With a little attention, your landing pages will help take your campaigns to the next level.

Freely translated from English: article from Unbounce