I am totally on the same page about the “agreeing” when clicking on a PPC ad. That same concept flows through to the landing page. Whatever they have agreed to in the ad, they are then just reconfirming it on the landing page. 
If you are up front with your users (like in your ”For serious buyers only” example) the chances are you will save a lot of money on your PPC campaign. The only users that should/will be clicking are the ones who will be excited about what your landing page has to offer.

Do you have any specific examples of well designed landing pages that have been tested to convert well?

There are a few threads on this with linked examples over at Quora – but a lot of those are tech service and app focused landing pages… so they include the standard screen shots, logo, social proof/reviews, and are actually not that optimized for conversion. 

They just look “shinier” and try and paint whatever application they are marketing as high perceived value and “cool.”

After testing and using landing pages with very very little slick design included, and beating some of the most fancy styled pages, I don’t believe design is the most important factor. At least as most people understand the word “design” to mean – lots of fancy graphics, shiny look and feel, etc.

I believe LAYOUT in order to FOCUS the users attention, both of which of course are parts of design, are the key elements that weigh most heavily on conversion. But you don’t need anything fancy to accomplish these. 

You spelled out some of the key elements in your post which are some the items that I include and spend a lot of time adjusting the layout of in order to “sculpt” how and where I want my readers attention to go.

Again, thanks for the comment and if you have any specific LP’s that have tested well…. please post here. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. *unless it distracts from the focus and your conversion goals  

Your link to the landing page quality score post was broken – but I found it and am reposting for you. http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/landing-page-quality-score/24102011/

You’re absolutely right about the importance of Ad Text in PPC ads as it relates to on page content/offer. There are a few ways to think about and approach this area of LP conversion optimization, and I’m glad you mentioned it.

Your ad has the power to “prime” your reader. There are very subtle expectations created in a readers mind when they have read your ad copy and have clicked on it over to your landing page.

As an exercise, you can think of a click on your ad as a user “agreeing” that whatever you stated about your product or about the user themselves in your ad, to be true.

A quick example of a specific “priming” technique that also has another important potential benefit is include what is called a Negative Qualifier in your ad.

Negative Qualifiers work like this: Do you want to pay for clicks that will never convert for you? If not, then you want to test negative qualifiers. These are basically ways to get people to self select in or out of your offer BEFORE they ever even get to your landing page.

A simple example would be running ads for a product you’re marketing. You might include in your ad the words “For serious buyers only”. This can potentially accomplish 2 things:

A) weed out “lookie Lou” clickers

B) actually “prime” the people who do click so that they are slightly more open to paying for your product, as they have subtly agreed to the fact that they are a serious buy, and
thus might be more likely to want to stay consistent with that self image

There are lots of other devices to think about testing in your ad copy that can change user perception and behavior both on the Google SERP and on your landing page.

Feel free to post any other specific devices you like. I’ll try and join back in later with a few more.

Thanks.

The title of this article is too vague/broad. The title makes it seem that the article is targeted towards a small niche market of start-up people. The problem is that the start-up people already know the basics of the game of “landing pages that convert”.

Or they might not even KNOW the basics, but they at least have their own ideas about it. That makes such a broad sounding title sound unattractive and uninteresting. The title doesn't promise any new views or angles to the subject that the reader already likes to think he understands. You should give more info in the title. Anything. Like “Landing Pages That Call To Action: Higher Conversion Rate!”.