Landing page relevancy is the degree to which your ads and keywords are related to the content contained on your landing page.  High landing page relevancy is the goal; the more relevant your ads and keywords are to your content, the higher the likelihood of your campaigns breezing through the editorial review process with minimal disapprovals and the better the chances that visitors to your site will find what they're looking for quickly and easily.

Let's say I'm looking for a new MP3 player to give my husband for his birthday.  If I enter "MP3 players" as my search query, I can expect to be presented with several ads all promising me great deals on a wide selection of MP3 players.  All of them promise MP3 player information at the other end of the click, but the degree of relevancy to my search query won't reveal itself until I've made the click and visited the site. 

Here's what my search might look like as I click on each ad:

Click #1 (low relevancy):  Clicking on the first ad brings me to the retailer's main audio electronics page.  Good, but I'm not interested in home stereo systems, speakers or car stereos, so I'm going to have to skim the page in search of information on MP3 players.  I locate a link and blurb about this retailer's offerings a few paragraphs down and discover they only offer one brand exclusively, which wasn't mentioned in the ad.  I'm a comparison shopper so I want to see what each brand and model offers when pitted against competitors, so I click the "Back" button on my browser to return to the search results page. 

Result: If this was your ad, you were just charged for my click and didn't get the sale because your landing page wasn't relevant enough and your ad copy wasn't specific enough.

Click #2 (medium relevancy): I try my luck with the next ad.  This time I'm brought to that retailers portable audio electronics page, a bit more specific than the previous advertiser's landing page, but still not quite what I need.  After being greeted with a large image letting me know they're having a sale on all Sirius/XM satellite receivers, I'm again forced to scroll down the page looking for information on MP3 players.  I find the information I need about half way down the page, again with a link to click on to go to the specific MP3 player page.  I can see they offer several brands, but now I'm a little annoyed.  It seemed this advertiser was trying to trick me into an upsell by making sure I saw their ad about the Sirius/XM receiver sale first -- why didn't the ad just bring me straight to the MP3 player page?  Again, I hit the "Back" button to try the next ad.

Result: If this was your ad, you were just charged for my click, but I didn't buy anything because I felt that you were trying to dupe me into spending more than I originally intended to.

Click #3 (high relevancy): Frustrated, I try again with ad #3.  I'm brought to a landing page with a large, friendly banner at the top announcing I've arrived at the MP3 player page.  I'm able to easily find exactly what I'm looking for as I skim through the page, learning about each brand, model and what they offer.  I can even select a few of them and hit a "Compare" button so I can view the features of each one side-by-side.  In no time at all, I make my decision, add my selection to my shopping cart and proceed on to complete my order.

Result:  If this was your ad, congratulations!  You got the sale because your landing page was highly relevant to my search query;  I quickly and easily found exactly what I was looking for when I started my search.

For more information on landing page relevancy and how to improve it, visit Hana Ondrusek's previous post, 5 Tips for Improving Landing Page Relevancy or, if you have 5 minutes and 21 seconds to view it, the Microsoft adExcellence tutorial, Landing Pages Guidelines.