Quality Score on Google AdWords is rarely explained properly and for many businesses ends up being ignored. Yet the quality of your ads, as perceived by Google has a tangible effect on the value you can draw from AdWords.
Quality Score is a number from out of 10, that is used to grade the relevancy of your ad to the keyword you are targeting. Four different factors are used to determine your score:
- Ad copy relevance to targeted keyword
- Landing Page copy relevance to targeted keyword
- Expected CTR
- Ad extension usage
What Is A ‘Good’ Score?
A score of 1 to 4 shows that your ad is most likely totally irrelevant as far as Google is concerned and you have a whole lot of changes to make.
A score of 5 or 6 is roughly the ‘average’ point, showing that your ad has some relevancy but not totally so.
A score of 7 to 9 is above average and shows an effective ad. Anything within this range is doing a great job.
A score of 10 is perfection! But this score is generally reserved for branded keywords (anything containing your company name or company terms).
Quick Fixes To Improve Quality Score
Improving quality score isn’t all that challenging, so here are some changes you can make quickly to improve your ad performance.
Create A Custom Landing Page
The use of keywords on your landing page is crucial to Quality Score. As a result of that, building a custom landing page for different ad groups can be more than worth it.
Aim to not just use the general best practices for landing pages, but also to ensure that your page has a keyword density of 1% or 2% to try and ensure google knows this page is about what you are trying to say it is.
To build this kind of page you could use a tool like Leadpages or Unbounce but for most cases, just create a simple page in WordPress or your platform of choice and use that as your landing page.
Keyword-ify Your Ads
The best performing ads by Quality Score standards will contain a mention of the exact keyword in the title, description and generally the display URL as well. To do this, generally aim for smaller ad groups with more specific ads.
Although frustrating to manage, having more specific ad groups allows for far more specific ads and is an easy way to increase Quality Score.
Is it worth trying to get a 9 or 10?
In almost every case, NO! Trying to tweak your ad or page until you receive a perfect ad score is nearly pointless when your Cost-Per-Click is less than $15 or $20. Past that point it can be worth going for gold with your Quality Score.
But when you are competing for ‘accountants brisbane’ or ‘concreters brisbane’, it just isn’t worth the time or effort to get a 9 or 10. Instead pass the 7 point and be happy.
[cta id=”2091″ vid=”0″]
