Guides · Landing pages
How to Build a Landing Page for Google Ads: One Search, One Action
By Josh Croom · October 27, 2026 · 11 min read
A landing page for Google Ads answers one search and asks for one action, like a call, a text, a booking or a short form. Build it for a phone first, put the number and your proof in the top half, keep it fast, and test it on a phone before any ad sends people there.
No hot water on a weeknight
7:48 PM. A homeowner with no hot water searches on her phone and taps the first ad. The page opens on a photo of a smiling family, a paragraph about the company's history and a menu with nine links, and the phone number sits at the very bottom.
She hits back and taps the next ad, and that page says Water Heater Repair at the top, with a call button and three reviews right under it. She's talking to a plumber in under a minute. The first company paid for her click too, and got nothing back.
water heater repair near me
Three numbers that shape every page
We lay out every landing page around what visitors do once they arrive from an ad.
- 68%of visits came from a phoneon our client sites outside ecommerce
- 48%of a page, on average, is as far as visitors scrolledweighted by visits, on the same sites
- 32%more likely to leavewhen a phone page took 3 seconds to load instead of 1
Why ads need their own page
Your home page has to serve everyone at once: past customers, job seekers and people checking your hours. A person who taps an ad has one problem and wants it solved today. A page built for that one search gives her the answer and the button right away, instead of asking her to find her way through a menu.
Google pays attention to this as well, because landing page experience is one of the parts of Quality Score, and Google describes it as how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad. Google's own advice is to choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and keywords, and to make it quick and easy for people to take the action you want.
Build one page for each kind of search, and let many keywords share it. If people search for water heater repair and for drain cleaning, those are two different jobs, so they get two pages, each with its own headline and its own button.
How to build a landing page for Google Ads, step by step
We follow these 11 steps on every page we build for ads. Skipping one usually shows up later as clicks that never turn into calls.
Step 1
Pick the one job
Each page answers one kind of search and asks for one action: a call, a text, a booking or a form. If people search for two different things, build two pages, because a page that tries to answer every search ends up answering none of them well.
Step 2
Say what they searched
The headline names the service and the town in plain words, like (your service) in (your town). Skip the clever line, because people should see what they searched in the very first thing they read.
Step 3
Make the first screen clear
On a phone, the first screen tells a stranger what you do, where you do it and what to tap. One button stands out from everything else, and it's the action you picked in step 1.
Step 4
Put the phone number everywhere
The number sits in the header of every page as a link that dials with one tap. For trades, a call bar stays fixed to the bottom of the phone screen, and the number shows again next to the form for anyone who'd rather talk.
Step 5
Put proof near the button
Reviews, your years in business, any license you hold and real photos go high on the page, not at the bottom. We put at least 3 reviews within a screen of the main button, and we link to all of your reviews on Google.
Step 6
Keep the form short
Ask for a name and a phone number, then only what you need to call back, like a ZIP code, the service and an optional note. Make email optional, since some people won't give it, and say next to the send button when they'll hear back from you.
Step 7
Write the way people talk
Use short, everyday words in sentences of normal length, and aim for a sixth to eighth grade reading level. Never change a price, a phone number, an address, your hours or a legal line just to make it read easier.
Step 8
Make it fast on a phone
Size each photo for real phone screens, because a photo sized for a big desktop makes a phone download far more than it needs. Then test every page in mobile mode against the Core Web Vitals speed targets.
Step 9
Count every action
Track each tap to call, tap to text and form sent, so you can see which page earned each lead. Save the ad's click ID and source in hidden form fields, and fire the tracking before the page moves on to the thank you page, because a late count often gets lost.
Step 10
Check it, fix it, check it again
Run the speed, access, link and headline checks, fix what fails, and run them again. If a page still misses after three rounds of fixes, a person takes over instead of letting it ship.
Step 11
Get a yes before ads go live
The business owner approves the page before any ad points at it, and until then the ads keep sending people to the main site. That way nobody pays for clicks to a page the owner hasn't seen.
The settings we hold every page to
Every page we build for ads has to clear these numbers before it goes live. The speed targets match Google's own good thresholds for Core Web Vitals: main content within 2.5 seconds, a response to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and a layout shift of 0.1 or less.
Lighthouse is Google's open-source page test, and you can run it on any page through Chrome's developer tools or the PageSpeed Insights site. Run it in mobile mode, because a page that scores well on a desktop can still be slow on a phone over a cell signal.
| Setting | What we use |
|---|---|
| Per page | 1 kind of search and 1 action: call, text, book or form |
| Reading level, English | Grade 6 to 8 |
| Lighthouse mobile performance | 90 or higher |
| Lighthouse mobile accessibility | 96 or higher |
| Lighthouse mobile SEO | 92 or higher |
| Lighthouse mobile best practices | 90 or higher |
| Main content shows (LCP) | 2.5 seconds or less |
| Page shift while loading (CLS) | 0.1 or less |
| Response to a tap (INP) | 200 milliseconds or less |
| Serious accessibility errors | 0 |
| Broken links inside the site | 0 |
| Main headline (H1) per page | Exactly 1 |
| Reviews within a screen of the main button | 3 or more |
| Years, license and reviews | In the top 40% of the page |
| AI score for the look and for the words | 85 or higher, average of 2 passes |
| Fix rounds before a person steps in | 3 |
| Screen widths we test | 375, 768 and 1440 pixels |
What counting every action looks like
When each call and form carries the page it came from, you can see which pages earn their clicks and which ones need work.
Calls and forms
To make this work, turn on auto-tagging in Google Ads, which Google says adds a parameter called GCLID, short for Google Click Identifier, to the addresses people click through. Save that ID in a hidden field on your form along with the source, and you can match each lead back to the ad that brought it.
Mistakes that waste the click
Each of these turns a paid click into a visitor who leaves. You can spot most of them by opening the page on your own phone.
- Building one page that tries to answer every search, so the headline can't match any of them.
- Using a form that asks for more than you need to call someone back, which turns away people who only wanted a quick answer.
- Saving reviews and proof for the end, even though most visitors never scroll that far.
- Testing only on a desktop, when most of your visitors will see the page on a phone.
- Writing a clever headline in place of the service and the town, so the visitor can't tell at a glance that she's in the right place.
- Sending ads to a page before the business owner has said yes to it.
Is your page ready for ads?
Open your page on your phone and answer six quick questions about what you see. Your answers stay on your device.
Does the headline name the service and the town in plain words?
Can a visitor tap to call from the first screen on a phone?
Are at least three reviews within a screen of the main button?
Does the form ask only for a name, a phone number and what they need?
Does the main content show within 2.5 seconds on a phone?
Is every call, text and form counted in Google Ads?
Your page is ready for ads, so run the same check every time you change it, because a new photo or a new form field can slow down a fast page without anyone noticing.
You're close, so fix the first question you answered No before the ads send anyone there, since each one costs you visitors you've already paid for.
Hold the ads on your main site for now and start with the headline and the phone number, because those two changes help the most visitors in the least time.
Before the ads go live
Tick each one off as you go. Your ticks stay on this device.
0 of 7 done
How we build landing pages for the ads we run
We build landing pages for the Google Ads accounts we manage, and we test every one the way a phone sees it, against those same settings, before an ad sends anyone to it. On Open Spots Search and Growth, your landing page is part of the build. A whole website is $4,997 for a business or $2,997 for a nonprofit, and you pay once. Hosting is $50 every 4 weeks, unless you're on one of our plans, and every option is on our pricing page.
A page can bring in the call, but the job still depends on how fast someone answers or calls back, and our speed to lead post covers that routine. If your ads already run, our PPC audit checklist shows where the landing page fits in a full account review.
If you'd like a second look at the page your ads send people to, book a call with Miguel. He'll look at the page with you and talk through what we'd change first.
Questions people ask
Do I need a landing page for Google Ads?
You can send ads to any page on your site, but a page built for one search and one action makes it easier for a visitor to act. Google's own advice is to choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and keywords.
What should a Google Ads landing page include?
Include a headline that names the service and the town, a tap-to-call number, one main button, reviews near that button and a short form. Keep the proof and the button in the top half, because the average visitor on our client sites scrolled through 48% of a page.
How fast should a landing page load?
Aim for the main content to show in 2.5 seconds or less on a phone, which is Google's own good threshold. Google and SOASTA found that a phone page that took three seconds made visitors 32% more likely to leave than one that took a second.
How many landing pages do I need for Google Ads?
Build one for each kind of search you pay for. If people search for two different services, build two pages, so each one can repeat its own search in the headline and ask for one clear action.
Does the landing page affect Quality Score?
Yes. Landing page experience is one of the parts of Quality Score. Google describes it as how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad, and its advice is to choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and keywords.
See how we build websites around calls and forms
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