Google Adwords Quality Score - What it is and 5 Ways to Improve it

When it comes to paid search (PPC campaign's), the Quality Score is a a key influence over the cost and effectiveness of your paid search campaigns. It is intended to give you the idea or sense of the quality of your ads and it is also a key factor to Google Ad Rank. Google Quality Score affects how your PPC ads perform and how much you pay for each click.

Quality Score is Google's rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. It is used to determine your cost per click (CPC) and multiplied by your maximum bid to determine your ad rank in the ad auction process. Google uses three main factor to determine the quality of you ads, these factors includes

• Expected click through rate
• Ad relevance
• Landing page experience

The Expected click through rate is one of the major factor to getting a high quality score. Although, know one outside of Google knows exactly how much each factor “weighs” in the Quality Score algorithm. But, when the people who see's your ad click on it, it gives Google a strong indication that your ads are relevant and helpful to users. Accordingly, Google rewards you with Higher ad rankings Lower costs

Credit: wordstream

How Adwords Quality Score Works

Having a high Quality Score means that the Google systems think your ad and landing page are relevant and useful to the person looking at your ad. The ad is valuable to the searcher.

Apart from the three factors listed above, the Adwords Quality Score also works with;

Past Performance Data

Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of how well a keyword has performed overall in past ad auctions. Based on this data, each of your keywords gets a Quality Score on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest score and 10 is the highest and a Null Quality Scores is designated with a "—" (dash) in the table, it appears when there are not enough impressions or clicks to accurately determine a keyword’s Quality Score.

On the Ads Quality Scores, New keywords initially get a null Quality Score, designated by “—" (read: dash) in the table. But, as the ads runs, the keywords accumulate performance data and your Quality Score will gradually change depending on the ad relevance, click through rate and landing page experience.

You begin to see changes in your Quality Score once the ads starts having enough impressions. In some situations, you may see keywords getting a lot of impressions, but still has a null (dash) Quality Score. This happens when your keywords don’t have enough exact match impressions.

Exact match impressions refers to ads showing on searches for terms that are an exact match of your keyword. So if there haven’t been enough times that the ad showed for searches that were an exact match of your keywords, you could see a null Quality Score. Also,  to maintain a Quality Scores, the keywords need a recent exact match impressions. So, if a keyword doesn’t have enough recent traffic, its Quality Score may also turn back to null.

How to Improve Ad Quality Score in 5 Steps

Since Quality Score determines where and how often your ads appear, it’s important to boost your ratings by working consistently on the ad account. In AdWords, the best performing ads are usually the ones that people find the most relevant to what they are looking for.

For instance, when you search and surf the web: You tend to ignore things that you aren't interested in and focus on those that are related (read: relevant) to what you are looking for or interested in. Same way searchers tend to ignore ads that are not relevant to then. If you know what your customers are actually searching for, by focusing on making your campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing page relevant to them,  makes them more likely to click your ads.

Here are the top 5 things you can do to make your ads more relevant to your customers and improve your Quality Score;

1. Create very specific ad groups
When creating an ad group, each ad group within your campaign should focus on a single product or service so that your ads appear more relevant to the searcher. For instance, a soft-drink loving customer is more likely to click an ad about soft drinks other than a generic ad about drinks.

Relevance tends to lead to higher quality ads, and being very specific when creating an ad group is a way of been more relevant. A cool way of creating a very specific and relevant ads is, let say you own a baked goods shop that sells different types of cookie packages, think about creating ad groups for each of those different cookie packages, like one ad group for your holiday cookie package, and another ad group for your birthday cookie package.

2. Use a Powerful call-to-action
Your ad text should have a very strong call-to-action. These call-to-action's encourages users to click on your ad and helps them understand what they can do once they reach your landing page. Some sample of strong call-to-action words you can use to improve conversion are: Buy, Sell, Order, Browse, Find, Sign up, Try, Get a Quote.

3. Optimizing Landing Pages
You can optimize landing pages to match you ads text. Follow landing page best practices to create pages that connect directly with your ad groups and provide a cohesive experience for visitors, from keyword to conversion. If your ad are speaking differently from your landing page and the searcher clicks the back button (bounce), Google reduces you Quality Score and Ad Rank.

4. Include Keywords in your Ad Text
Including your keywords in your ad text (especially in your ad's headline) to show searchers that your ad is directly relevant to what they are looking for. When people see their search terms in your ad text, it shows them that your ad is relevant to them. Like, If you're trying to sell a soft drinks, and you have a keyword that says "cheap soft drinks near you" your ad text should also say "cheap soft drinks near you."

You can discover new, highly relevant keywords to add to your campaigns, including long-tail opportunities that can contribute to the bulk of your overall traffic. Need help thinking of more keywords? Try using Keyword Planner to help you think of additional keywords that you might want to add to your list.

5. Regularly Review Your Campaign Performance
Always test and tweak your campaigns to get the results you want. Regulate your ad performance to help figure out the best ways to achieve your goals. Over time, as you watch your ads you might notice changes to your clickthrough rate or conversion rate.

For example, if you notice a particular ad is not performing well as expected, you may edit the ad text, remove or add some keywords or if you find that customers aren't responding to a particular call-to-action in your ad text, remove that ad and try something else. It's all about experimenting!

Conclusion
Quality Score is primarily a measure of relevance, and improving keyword Quality Score is a matter of structuring your PPC campaigns into small, well-organized, tightly knit groups of keywords and better keyword research and organization can also naturally improve the quality and specificity of your ads and website content, allowing you to target the exact audience most likely to be searching for your offerings.

Low AdWords Quality Scores are primarily the result of disconnect between keywords, ad groups, ad text, and landing page content. A high Quality Score comes naturally when an AdWords account contains organized keywords in appropriate keyword groups, ad text that corresponds with certain ad groups, and landing pages that connect with the ad text's offer.

In Summary - 5 Ways to Improve Quality Scores

• 1. Create very specific ad groups
• 2. Use a Powerful call-to-action
• 3. Optimizing Landing Pages
• 4. Include Keywords in your Ad Text
• 5. Regularly Review Your Campaign Performance

To be candid, there is no easy, foolproof answer to improving your Quality Score formula, paying careful attention to relevance will greatly improve your scores.