For paid ads, send each click to a page about the exact thing the ad promised: a dedicated landing page, or a strong service page if you already have one. The homepage only works for brand searches or a business that does one thing. Every click on a paid ad costs money whether the person enquires or not. Send that click to your homepage, and you’ve paid to bring someone in and then asked them to find their own way. A lot of them won’t bother.
Your homepage is built for everyone: people who’ve heard of you, people comparing options, past customers looking for your phone number. An ad click is one specific person who searched for one specific thing a few seconds ago. They need a page about that thing.
A worked example
Say you’re a plumber in Ballina running a Google Ads campaign for blocked drains.
Someone searches “blocked drain plumber Ballina” at 7am. Your ad says:
Blocked Drain? Ballina Plumber Today
Same-day call-outs across Ballina and Lennox. Upfront pricing. Call now.
Option A: they land on your homepage. The hero image is a nice bathroom renovation. The headline is “Quality plumbing for the Northern Rivers”. There’s a menu with eight items, a slider about hot water systems, and the phone number in small text in the top corner. The person with water coming up through the shower drain has to work out if you do drains, if you can come today, and how to call you. Some will. Plenty will tap back and click the next ad.
Option B: they land on a blocked drain page. The headline says “Blocked drain in Ballina? We can usually be there today.” Right underneath is a big call button. Then three short points: what a typical call-out costs or what affects the price, the areas you cover, and that you use a drain camera so you can show them the problem. A few reviews that mention drains. A short form for people who’d rather not call.
Same ad, same budget, same click cost. Option B gives that person what they were looking for in the first two seconds.
What message match means
Message match is the idea that the page should continue the conversation the ad started. If the ad says “Same-day blocked drains”, the page headline should say roughly the same thing. If the ad mentions a price or an offer, the page should show it straight away.
When there’s a mismatch, people feel like they’ve clicked the wrong thing, even if your homepage technically mentions drains somewhere.
It also matters to Google. Landing page experience is one of the components of Quality Score in Google Ads, along with expected click-through rate and ad relevance. A page that’s relevant to the search and easy to use can help your ads show more often and cost less per click than a page that isn’t. Google doesn’t publish an exact formula, so treat it as one more reason to do it rather than a guaranteed discount.
The same principle applies to Facebook and Instagram ads. If the ad shows a specific product or offer, the page should show that same product or offer, not a general shop page.
What a landing page needs
A landing page for a local service business doesn’t have to be fancy. It has to be focused.
- A headline that matches the ad. Same service, same location, same promise.
- The main action above the fold. On mobile, that’s usually a call button. For higher-value work, a short quote form.
- The three or four things people need to decide. Price guidance, service area, how quickly you can come, what makes you safe to hire (licence, insurance, reviews).
- Proof. Reviews that relate to this service, and real photos of your work.
- Fewer exits. Many landing pages remove the full menu so the only obvious next step is to get in touch. For a small business, we usually keep a minimal header with the logo and phone number, so people don’t feel trapped.
- Fast loading on a phone. Big background videos and sliders slow a page down at exactly the moment someone is deciding whether to wait.
When it’s worth building one
Not every business running ads needs separate landing pages. This is how we’d decide.
You probably need one if:
- You’re spending more than a few hundred dollars a month on a single service.
- Your ads target one specific job (blocked drains, switchboard upgrades, teeth whitening) but your site only has a general services page.
- You’re running a time-limited offer or a campaign that doesn’t fit naturally into your normal site.
- You can see in Google Ads or Analytics that people click, then leave without calling or filling in the form.
A good service page might be enough if:
- You already have one page per service, each with a clear headline, phone number and form. This is a big part of why we push one page per service: those pages double as solid ad destinations.
- Your budget is small and spread across a few services.
- You’re testing ads for the first time and want to see if there’s any demand before building more pages.
The homepage is only OK if:
- You do one thing, in one area, and your homepage already says so in the headline. A single-service tradie with a sharp homepage can get away with it.
- The ad is a brand campaign for people searching your business name. They’re looking for you, so the homepage is fine.
Should a landing page be on your main site?
Usually yes. Building it on your existing WordPress site means it uses your brand, your hosting and your tracking, and you can hide it from the menu and from search engines if it duplicates an existing page. In Elementor, a landing page can be built from your existing design system in a few hours. We’ve written up how we build Elementor landing pages for Google Ads if you want the detail.
Separate landing page platforms make sense for agencies running lots of A/B tests. For most small businesses, they’re another subscription and another login to lose.
Before you spend another dollar on ads
Open your ad, click through to the page it sends people to, and read it on your phone as if you were the person who searched. If you can’t tell within two seconds that you’re in the right place, neither can they.
Landing pages built on your own site, matched to the ads that point at them, are part of our web design work. If it’s the ads themselves that need a look, start with our guide to Google Ads for local service businesses, or talk to us about Google Ads setup and management for the campaign as a whole.