Google Ads
Your Google Ads are sending people to the wrong page
Most broker campaigns send every click to the homepage. Why the click needs a page of its own, why a first home buyer and a commercial borrower need two, and why neither page should know the other exists.
Rebecca TicknerMFAA member & finance broker · founder, WeCompound
Published 6 min read
Topics: Google Ads, Landing pages, First home buyers, Commercial, Calculator
A mortgage broker's Google Ads should land on a page built for the search that triggered them, not on the homepage. That page opens by repeating what the person typed, sticks to one loan type, and asks for one thing: their details. The homepage answers every question except the one they just asked Google.
I build these pages for brokers, and the landing pages for WeCompound's own ads are built the same way. What follows is the reasoning, Google's own words on it, and a calculator that prices the difference on your account rather than on a borrowed benchmark.
Two searches.
Where the click lands decides what the person reads first
Borrower 1 searches
first home buyer broker
Welcome to Your Brokerage
Our calculators
Meet the team
Areas we service
Phone number in the footer
What they searched for: not on the screen
Borrower 2 searches
commercial property loan broker
Welcome to Your Brokerage
Our calculators
Meet the team
Areas we service
Phone number in the footer
What they searched for: not on the screen
Two different searches, one identical page. Neither borrower sees the thing they asked about without going looking for it.
Where the click lands now#
Search for a broker on your phone and look at where the ads go. Most of them open on the homepage: a slider, a welcome line, a row of calculators, the team, the suburbs they service. All of it true, and none of it the thing you just typed.
Google says it plainly in its help page on ads and landing pages: “When someone clicks your ad, they expect to land on a page that's relevant to what they saw in your ad.” A homepage is relevant to your business, and rarely to the search.
Landing page experience is also one of the three things Google rates in Quality Score, alongside expected clickthrough rate and ad relevance. Google calls Quality Score a diagnostic tool, so read it as a signal rather than a price list. It is still Google telling you the page is part of the ad.
From the post.
“Most mortgage brokers running Google Ads send every click straight to their homepage. Same page that talks about their calculators, their team, their service areas - everything except the thing someone just searched for.”
The homepage
- Opens with your logo and a welcome line
- A menu with six ways off the page
- Every loan type you write, side by side
- The phone number in the footer
- Written for anyone who might visit
A page built for the search
- Opens with the words they typed
- No menu, one way forward
- One loan type, the one they asked about
- The form in the first screen on a phone
- Written for the person who clicked this ad
One page per search#
A first home buyer searching at night wants to know whether this is possible at all: the deposit, what they can borrow, which government schemes they might qualify for. A business owner looking for a commercial property loan wants to know whether you do this kind of deal, and what you will need from them. One page cannot open with both questions, and a page that opens with neither has lost them both.
So each ad group gets its own page, and each page opens with the words of that ad group's searches. The heading on the first home buyer page says first home buyer. The heading on the commercial page says commercial property loan. It sounds too simple to matter, and it is the part most campaigns skip.
WeCompound's own landing pages work the same way. The page behind the website ads has a heading that says broker websites, and the page behind the Google Ads campaign has a heading that says Google Ads for brokers. Neither has a menu, because a visitor who came from an ad has one job on the page.
The build this week.
“I built two dedicated landing pages this week for a broker. One for First Home Buyers & one for Commercial Lending. Each one opens by naming exactly what the visitor typed into Google.”
Why neither page mentions the other#
Every link on a landing page is a way off it. A link from the first home buyer page to the commercial page helps nobody: the first home buyer did not ask, and the commercial borrower never arrives there, because their ad sent them to their own page.
The same logic keeps the pages out of the main site. Ours are noindex and left out of the menu, the footer and the sitemap, so they never compete in search with the pages that are meant to rank, and nobody lands on one by accident. The only way in is the ad.
It also keeps your reporting honest. The short form on our landing pages saves the click identifier and the keyword from the ad's tracking link with the person's details, so each enquiry arrives knowing which search produced it. When the first home buyer page only ever receives first home buyer clicks, its conversion rate is a first home buyer conversion rate, and not a blend that describes neither loan type.
Neither page mentions the other one exists.
What the page is worth on your numbers#
I am not going to print a conversion rate for a broker landing page. I do not have a measured one I would stand behind, and a borrowed one is someone else's account, in a different market, on a different budget.
What you can do is put your own numbers in. Take your spend, your cost per click and the conversion rate where your ads land now, then the rate you would want a page built for the search to reach. The calculator holds the clicks the same on both sides, so the only thing that moves is the page.
The settlement and upfront lines use the modelled ranges for the loan type from the WeCompound economics file. They are a model, not a measurement, and they are there so the gap reads in the units you actually run your business on. The same ranges sit behind what one settlement is worth in the note on what Google Ads costs a broker.
Your numbers.
What the page your ads land on is worth
Four numbers from your own account. The calculator works out what each page costs you per enquiry, and what the gap is worth at the modelled settlement rate for the loan type.
What Google bills you a month, from the Billing summary.
The Avg. CPC column for the campaign, last 30 days.
Genuine enquiries divided by clicks, on the page your ads land on now.
The rate you would want a page built for the search to reach. Your number, not a benchmark.
Sets the modelled settlement rate and the upfront per settlement from the WeCompound economics file.
Enter your spend, your cost per click and the two conversion rates to see the comparison. Nothing is filled in for you, because a borrowed rate would only tell you about someone else's account.
A model built on the figures you enter, not a measurement, a projection or a promise of results. The settlement range and upfront are modelled from the WeCompound economics file.
How this is calculated
Clicks are your monthly spend divided by your cost per click, rounded down to whole clicks.
Enquiries are clicks multiplied by each conversion rate. Cost per enquiry is the spend divided by those enquiries.
Extra settlements are the extra enquiries multiplied by the low and high end of the modelled settlement rate for the loan type. Extra upfront is those settlements multiplied by the modelled upfront commission per settlement.
The spend and the clicks are held the same on both sides on purpose, so the only difference you are looking at is the page.
Before you build anything.
See where your ads land today
The complimentary Google Ads audit reads your account, read only, and tells you which page each ad group sends people to and what the account is counting when it says it converted. A landing page built for the campaign is part of the Google Ads setup.
Get the complimentary Google Ads auditRelated tool.
What one settlement is worth to you
The settlement value calculator on the Google Ads page works out what one settlement is worth in your book from your own loan size, upfront and trail, and how many enquiries a settlement takes at a modelled rate.
Open the settlement calculatorCommon questions
A landing page built for the search, in almost every case. The page should open by repeating what the person typed, cover one loan type and ask for one thing. The homepage still has a job for searches on your own business name, where the person already knows you and wants the front door.