Microsoft Ads Landing Page Optimization for Bing Ads Landing Pages That Keep the Click

How Microsoft Advertising judges your landing page

Google describes landing page experience in general terms. Microsoft is unusually specific. Its own help documentation says the landing page experience score “is based on how many times customers leave your ad’s landing page shortly after arriving.” In other words, Microsoft is watching the same thing a conversion audit looks for: the visitor who lands, does not see what the ad promised, and hits the back button.

Landing page experience is one of three components of the Microsoft Advertising quality score. Each component is graded 3 (Above Average), 2 (Average), or 1 (Below Average), and together they roll up into a keyword quality score from 1 to 10.

A few details from the same documentation are worth knowing before you spend a week on the page. The score is based on searches that matched your keywords exactly in the last 30 days. Traffic from syndicated search partner sites does not count. The score updates every day, usually between 2 and 6 p.m. GMT, and you can report on its history for up to 18 months. There is also a Quality impact column that forecasts how many extra impressions a better score could win: 3 means more than 500 a day, 2 means 100 to 500, and 1 means fewer than 100. That column is the quickest way to decide which ad group’s landing page to fix first.

Does quality score affect cost in Microsoft Ads?

Not directly, and this is where many Bing ads guides get it wrong. Microsoft’s documentation says quality score “is not used at auction time to determine ad rank, and does not affect cost or spend.” It is a diagnostic built from past auctions. The auction still judges relevance and your landing page in real time, so the things that lift the score tend to lift delivery too, but a better number in the Keywords table does not by itself lower your cost per click.

That changes what you should optimize. The goal is not a 10 on the dashboard. The goal is a lower cost per conversion, and the landing page is where that number is set. If 100 clicks cost you $250 and turn into 3 leads, each lead costs about $83. If a better page turns the same 100 clicks into 5 leads, each lead costs $50, and nothing about your bids or budget changed. The same arithmetic is why the PPC landing page optimization work usually pays back faster than a bid change.

What the Converto audit checks on a Bing ads landing page

Paste the final URL your campaign points at. The audit reads the live page the way a first-time visitor would and scores five areas: copy (28 percent of the score), CTA (24), layout (20), speed (16), and AI-readability (12). Every deduction names the measurement it came from. These are the thresholds that matter most for paid search traffic from Microsoft:

After scoring, Converto writes variants for the weakest parts, usually the headline, the first screen, and the button copy, so you can ship a better page before the next monthly budget goes out. If the problem is the words on the button, the CTA optimization check goes deeper; if it is the first line, start with the headline analyzer.

Can I use the same landing pages for Google Ads and Microsoft Ads?

Yes, and most advertisers do, because Microsoft Advertising can import campaigns straight from Google Ads, final URLs included. That is the right starting point. It is not always the right finishing point. The pages were written and tested against Google traffic, and the Microsoft audience can behave differently. Check the device report in your own account, because many advertisers find a larger share of desktop clicks on Microsoft than on Google, and B2B advertisers can bid up specific companies, industries, and job functions through LinkedIn profile targeting.

So after an import, check three things. First, that every final URL still resolves and still matches the ad group it belongs to, because imports copy broken and outdated URLs as faithfully as good ones. Second, that the Microsoft conversion tag (UET) fires on the thank-you step, since a page that converts but does not report it looks exactly like a page that fails. Third, that the first screen still makes sense for the searcher you are now paying for. A page built for a mobile shopper on Google can be the wrong page for an operations manager at a desk. If you run Google Ads too, the Google Ads landing page experience page covers how Google grades the same URL, and the two scores can differ.

LinkedIn profile targeting and what the page has to say

Microsoft Advertising is, in its own words, the only ad platform other than LinkedIn that lets you target people based on their LinkedIn profile: company, industry, and job function. It is available on Search, Dynamic Search ads, Shopping, Audience, and Performance Max campaigns, and you can list up to 1,000 companies in an ad group or campaign.

One detail changes how you should write the page. On these targets, Microsoft says LinkedIn profile targeting “will not narrow your ads’ audience”. It works as a bid adjustment, “bid only” rather than “target and bid”. You pay more to win the clicks from the job functions you care about, but everyone else who searches the keyword can still click. That means the page has to do the qualifying the targeting does not. Name who the product is for in the first screen, state the price range or minimum contract where you can, and give the wrong visitor an honest reason to leave before they fill in the form and cost your sales team a call. For a B2B page, our B2B landing page optimization notes cover the rest, and if the page books demos, the demo request page audit goes field by field.

Why are my Bing ads getting clicks but no conversions?

Clicks without conversions usually come down to one of five causes, and only one of them is the ad account. Work through them in this order, because the first two are the cheapest to rule out:

1. Tracking. The UET tag is missing on the confirmation page, or the conversion goal is set up on the wrong URL. The page may be converting and reporting nothing.
2. Message match. The headline does not repeat what the ad promised, so the searcher decides in a few seconds that they are in the wrong place. Our guide to message match for paid traffic covers the fix.
3. The next step is hidden. The form or button sits below several sections of copy, or the page offers six things to click and none of them stands out.
4. The form is too long. Asking for phone, budget, and timeline on the first touch costs more leads than it qualifies.
5. The traffic is wrong. Broad match and search partner traffic can bring in searches that were never going to buy. This one is an account problem, and no landing page fixes it.

Converto checks causes two, three, and four on the live page in about a minute and tells you which one is costing the most. The first and fifth need someone inside the account.

What an audit will not tell you

An audit reads the page. It does not see your bids, your search terms report, your offer, or your competitors’ prices, and it cannot prove that a change caused a lift. A page can score well and still lose to a cheaper competitor or a better offer. What an audit does well is find the measurable problems on the page itself, rank them by how much they are likely to cost, and hand you rewrites to test. For the proof, run the change as an A/B test or compare the same period before and after, on enough traffic to trust the difference.

Who this is for

This page is for three kinds of buyer. The first is a small business owner running their own Microsoft Ads account next to Google Ads, who has imported campaigns and never looked at the landing pages through the Microsoft lens. The second is a B2B marketer using LinkedIn profile targeting on Bing search who is paying premium bids for the right job functions and losing them on a generic page. The third is an agency that manages Microsoft Ads for clients and needs a fast, repeatable landing page audit to attach to the monthly report. If you are deciding whether to hire an agency for Bing ads at all, our breakdown of Bing ads management pricing lists what agencies and freelancers charge and at what budget the fee pays for itself.