It, of course, may be one of a multitude of things. When someone wants ‘it’ and hits that online connection to track it down, the sites that should fare the best at serving that need know to get the heck out of the way of their visitors.

As the Google Website Optimizer blog discussed ways of doing this, they pointed out several useful resources for helping webmasters tweak their sites for a little bit better chance at converting the visitor. Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com received a mention for his advice on optimization; our talk with him about his book, Landing Page Optimization, appears here.

Google also cited a trio of excellent tips published at WiderFunnel. Those tips nudge webmasters to aim for brevity and directness with the pages arriving visitors hit.

WiderFunnel called for clear guides that call for action on the bottom of the content page. That provides a better option than forcing someone to hunt through a navigation bar for their next action.

Copy should be focused. Cut it in half, then do it again, WiderFunnel advised. And each page needs to present what they called persistent calls to action, like a contact link or a list of recommended products. Visitors don’t want to spend a lot of time looking for the next action choice (that impatience thing comes into play.)

Though a lot of people may be sweltering in the July heat, it’s time to start thinking about later in the year, when the important holiday shopping happens in the fourth quarter. Testing now can help later, and for anyone looking for more advice, SES San Jose will offer sessions on landing pages and a host of other search-related topics in August.

Coming to the AdWords keyword diagnostic section near you, or at least your management console, should be the ability to view how Google perceives your landing page load times.

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, speed is good. As SERoundtable noted, those load times mean money to advertisers.

Put up a landing page that loads faster than ones on comparable servers in a geographic region, and the keyword bid pricing should be favorable. Subjecting visitors to a slow page means a worse quality score.

Google, of course, will punish poor performers. Slow landing pages reflect poorly on the user experience, which people will blame on Google. Even Google has limits on what it will put up with in exchange for money, as has been observed during their push to encourage better all-around quality from their advertisers.

“Starting sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will impact your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared,” SERoundtable said. Now’s the time to get ready; waiting for June to deal with an average or worse report won’t be any fun for webmasters.

"Email marketers spend a lot of time and energy creating targeted, relevant campaigns, but then fail to carry the ball across the goal line due to lackluster landing pages," said Elaine O’Gorman, vice president of strategy for Silverpop. "Landing page optimization can have a tremendous impact on email marketing success rate."

Silverpop found that a Web page that does not match the look and tone of the email can lead to visitors leaving the site. Thirty-five percent of landing pages did not have the same look or tone of the email that led to the click. Twenty-nine percent of business to consumer companies had landing pages that did not match the email, compared to 41 percent of BtoB companies.

To receive a conversion that caused the email recipient to click a link in the first place, the best stategy is to repeat the offer on the landing page. Close to half (45%) of landing pages did not repeat the promotional copy found in the email.

"Landing pages with images and messaging matching the emails that generated initial interest are better able to reinforce the brand and move email recipients from clicking to converting," O’Gorman said.

In order to obtain email addresses of users who visit your landing page but are not in your database, its important to ask them to register. Thirty-five percent of landing pages did not include an opt-in request.

"The time and effort taken to optimize landing pages will be returned many times in customer loyalty, improved conversion rates and higher return-on-investment," O’Gorman said. "the Silverpop study found that email marketers need to work harder to reinforce the offer and support strong brand awareness."

If you’re going the organic route with your SEO, then the quality of your landing page and subsequent content pages will make or break you in short order. Or maybe you just want a premium price for that magic keyword; but if Google isn’t impressed with the quality of your landing page, then expect to feel the burn in your pocketbook.

Copyblogger has an outstanding article encompassing many aspects of the content monster, but four points that the piece made regarding landing page content were of particular merit for this discussion. Here’s what the writer had to say (with some of my comments mixed in as well):

Hit ‘em hard, and hit ‘em fast. The attention span of the average Internet user is somewhere around nine seconds, which is probably a generous estimate in actuality. You better be like Jerry McGuire and get me at “hello” or else it’s going to be a quick “goodbye” as I click the back button on my browser.

Social media is tricky, because the masses are often fickle. But if you can create a landing page that will generate any kind of a viral buzz, then you’ve won at least half of the inbound link battle.

I talked at length yesterday about links, so I won’t regurgitate the discussion here. Long story short, generating incoming links is what it’s all about, and a quality landing page can go a long way in the quest for linkage.

A good landing page is like a table of contents for your site. It’s going to let people know what you’re about, and what you have to offer, without inundating the reader with an avalanche of content right away. You don’t want to cause information overload. With that being said, a tightly wound landing page is going to be a heck of a lot easier to update in the long run.

So there you have it; yet more insight into developing quality landing page content. Keep striving for high quality scores and low minimum bids, and always remember than a landing page is always a work in progress.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

For most AdWords advertisers, the changes shouldn’t be a problem, according to Fortune Interactive’s own Al Scillitani. He tells ClickZ…

Penalizing irrelevant sites helps advertisers that link to quality content, site publishers, and consumers by increasing the relevance of Google’s ads, according to Al Scillitani, search marketing manager at Fortune Interactive. “The changes Google has implemented so far, and continues to implement, are things that advertisers should be doing anyway: use targeted keywords, [run] relevant ads with a good call to action, and link to a well written, relevant landing page,” Scillitani told ClickZ. “The quality score measurement makes the advertiser increase relevancy. To me, it makes sense that a relevant ad/landing page with the keyword in it will rank higher than an ad that is not relevant, assuming they have the same cost per click.”

That being said, it will be interesting to see if Google is able to understand the context of every page…

Scillitani voiced concerns over how Google determines what is relevant, worrying that sites with quality content would not be penalized for using synonyms, for example. “Is the ads bot going to go through the landing page and report back to AdWords some type of relevancy score? If so, that is scary to me,” he said. “If the bot does not recognize a synonym of your word or if it is taken out of context, will this affect your quality index score?”

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.