Why your Google Ads leads don't convert

When a Google Ads account is spending money and the enquiries are not coming, the first instinct is to change the keywords or the bids. Sometimes that is the answer. More often, the traffic is fine and the page it lands on is the problem.

Someone searching on Google has told you exactly what they want. The job of the ad and the landing page is to confirm, quickly, that they have found it. Every gap between the search, the ad and the page costs you enquiries.

Check the fit first

Take your top five search terms (the actual searches, from the search terms report, not your keyword list) and open the page each one lands on. Ask:

• Does the headline match the search? If someone searched for “commercial security fencing” and lands on a page headed “Quality fencing solutions”, they have to work to find out whether you do what they need. Many won’t.
• Is the service they searched for visible without scrolling? On a phone, the first screen is all most people see before deciding.
• Is the next step obvious? One clear call to action, repeated, beats five competing links.

The most common problems

Sending every ad to the home page. A home page is written for everyone, which means it speaks directly to no one. A page per service, or per group of closely related searches, almost always converts better.

A form that asks too much, or too little. Long forms lose people. But a form with only name and phone can fill the calendar with enquiries that were never a fit. The right answer is usually a short form with one or two qualifying questions that matter to your business, such as job size or location.

Trust signals below the fold. Reviews, licences, insurance and examples of past work do their job only if people see them. For a high value service, put them near the top.

Slow pages on mobile. Most paid search traffic for service businesses is on phones. If the page takes several seconds to load, part of what you paid for leaves before seeing anything.

A real example

On a security fencing account I worked on at The Agency Alternative, LS Fencing, the business wanted commercial work but was being shown to people searching for residential fencing. We rebuilt the campaign around commercial searches and built a landing page for that buyer: commercial jobs, certifications and insurance above the fold. The leads changed with it, and so did the size of the work.

Then look at the keywords

Once the page fits the search, keyword and bidding changes start to work properly, because you are improving traffic that has somewhere sensible to go. Doing it the other way round means paying more for visitors to the same page that was losing them.

If your account gets clicks but not enquiries, send us a message and we can tell you where the gap is.