Building an effective landing page is one of the keys to success in PPC affiliate marketing. You can have the best campaign in the world, but if your landing page is ineffective, you will not convert your sales.

In the next week or two I am going to build a complete campaign using Adwords to drive traffic to a site with effective landing pages. I will chronicle the steps I am taking along the way to let you know how successful I am. Meanwhile, step one in the process is to build the pages that will sell my product.

Here are a few essential steps you should take when building your landing page to ensure the highest conversion and ROI (Return on Investment).

Page Layout

• Make sure your page is laid out to show the most relevant information above the fold. This means it should be in the viewable area you see immediately without having to scroll down.
• It is also good to use lots of graphics. Graphics and pictures sell products!
• Branding is important too. Place your company (or affiliate) logo to ensure the customer they are making a safe purchase.
• Be sure to have a Privacy Policy linked in the footer.

Content and Writing Style

• Use keywords that are relevant to your campaign. Place these near the top to further comfort the customer that they are getting exactly what they are searching for. It is a bad idea to use deceptive keywords just to get people to click on the ad and come to your site. These people will just leave anyways and not complete a sale which inflates your cost per click.
• Make forms easy to fill out. Do not add unnecessary fields. Try to capture the least amount of information possible to get your customer to continue.
• The headline is the single most important piece of copy on the page. It should correspond exactly to the offer you are driving.

Call to Action

• Use persuasive copy to encourage your visitors to complete your offer.
• Create buttons that have direct instructions. Instead of saying “Click Here”, try to say “Get Your Free Ringtone Now!”

These are just a few of the most important essential tips for your landing page. Creating a landing page is a continual process. The best thing you can do is test, test, test! Sometimes changing one word or one color can make a huge difference.

Here are a few more resources to getting you on your way to a great converting landing page:

Article on SEOmoz

20 Guide lines to create successful landing pages

How to create a Landing Page that complies to the Google AdWords guidelines