Website and Quality Score: how to cut your cost per lead

Your website helps determine what a lead via Google Ads costs. Google rates your landing page as one of the three components of Quality Score, and the same page decides whether a paid click becomes an enquiry. So a fast, relevant page helps twice: in the rating of your ads and in your conversion rate.

As a Google Ads agency, we see in our accounts that a website built well for SEO also achieves an excellent Quality Score. Compared with the same client's old website, the cost per lead often drops by 30 to 40%. That is our experience, not a law.

What Quality Score measures exactly, why it is not itself an auction factor and how ad quality still affects your cost per click is explained by my colleague Benjamin in improving your Google Ads Quality Score. This article is about the part that happens on your website.

How does Google rate your landing page?

Google gives your landing page its own rating, alongside your ad and your expected click-through rate. In the Google Ads API, that component is literally described as the quality score of the landing page ^[1]. The other two are the performance of your ad and your expected click-through rate, each compared with other advertisers ^[1].

Each component gets one of three ratings: above average, average or below average ^[1]. If the landing page is "below average" for keywords that cost a lot, the gain lies on your website and not in your bids.

Test every landing page against three questions:

• Is it relevant? The page is about exactly what the ad promises, not about your company in general.
• Is it fast? It loads smoothly on mobile, without buttons that jump while you are trying to click.
• Is it usable? The visitor immediately sees what you do, for whom, where, and how to contact you.

Why does your cost per lead drop twice over?

Your cost per lead is your cost per click divided by your conversion rate. A better site works on both, and small improvements reinforce each other. A worked example with fictitious figures:

How large each effect is in your account differs per sector and per level of competition. The principle stays: if you only adjust bids, you leave a lever unused.

That speed alone brings in conversions was shown by Vodafone in 2021 with an A/B test on a landing page for paid traffic. The optimised version had a 31% better Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), with no visual or functional differences. It achieved 8% more sales and 15% more leads per visit ^[2].

What makes a landing page good for Google Ads?

A good landing page for Google Ads closely resembles a good page for Google Search: one topic, a clear answer and fast code. In concrete terms:

• One page per service, so every ad group lands on the page about exactly that topic, never on the home page.
• The promise from the ad at the top: the same service, the same region, the same price indication or lead time.
• Fast on mobile. Google calls a page good with an LCP within 2.5 seconds, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less ^[3]. How to measure that is covered in Core Web Vitals explained.
• Trust you can verify: your company details, your service area, genuine reviews and a phone number.
• A short form with only the fields you need, or a button to call or book straight away.
• The same language as the ad. In Belgium, that means separate pages in Dutch and in French.

Why does an SEO site win twice here?

What makes a page good for Google Search also makes it good for Google Ads. That is why every page we build starts from search data, with one keyword and one goal per page. Such a page is a strong landing page from day one.

We see the reverse too. A slow theme, a page that is about everything at once or a form that only appears after three clicks costs organic rankings and paid enquiries alike. How we build sites that avoid this, without a CMS, is covered in website without a CMS.

How do you measure the effect of a better site?

Compare the same campaigns over periods of equal length, and change as little as possible in your account in the meantime. Otherwise you won't know what caused the effect.

• Take a baseline on the old site, per campaign: cost per click, conversion rate, cost per lead and the three components of Quality Score.
• Keep the account stable: the same bid strategy, budgets and ads during the comparison.
• Compare fairly: for seasonal work, with the same period a year earlier.
• Check your conversion tracking before you decide anything. What you count as a lead must be the same before and after; my colleague Cédric explains how in GA4 key events and conversions.

Not sure whether your landing pages make your enquiries more expensive than necessary? The free Google Ads audit looks at structure, keywords, bid strategy, conversion tracking, budget and ads, and whether they match your landing pages. You get a report and a conversation, whatever you decide afterwards.