In a successful Google Ads campaign, quality score is crucial.
Unfortunately, many marketers don’t fully understand the concept of a Quality Score or how to improve theirs.
While a Quality Score may seem irrelevant, it’s an incredibly important marker of quality that can go a long way toward improving your PPC campaigns. Read on to learn more.
First things first: What is a Quality Score?
The Quality Score is the score that Google applies to your pay-per-click (PPC) ads after evaluating the relevance of your keywords and how useful the ad is to users. To determine a Quality Score, Google evaluates the following elements:
- The ad’s click-through rate
- The quality and relevance of a landing page
- The relevance of the content within the ad
- The previous performance of your AdWords account
- The relevance of each keyword included in your ad
While these factors impact the quality score in varying degrees, the click-through-rate is the most important, and a higher click-through-rate tells Google that the ad is relevant, useful, and beneficial to users.
Expected CTR is Google’s calculation of the rate at which internet users will click your ads to be directed to your landing page. In estimating CTR, Google considers how your keywords have performed thus far based on ad position. Google assigns your keyword a rating of above average, average or below average.
This, in turn, results in more pronounced rankings and lower costs for your PPC campaigns.
How AdWords Quality Score Impacts PPC
In addition to the fact that a great Ads Quality Score can help you rank more prominently, it can also serve to lower the cost you pay per click. A higher Quality Score translates into a lower CPC, which makes it easy for marketers to enjoy a higher ROI.
The 5 Best Practices for Improving Your Quality Score
While there are many ways to improve your quality score, the following five tips will help you get started on the right foot and start ranking better, right now.
Conduct keyword research to locate new keyword opportunities
Since keyword relevance is such a large factor in Google’s determination of your Quality Score, doing keyword research to identify new, relevant, targeted keywords is a great way to improve your overall Quality Score while also ensuring that your PPC ads appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
While there are dozens of keyword research tools available, many marketers choose to use platforms like SEMrush or KWFinder.
Although both tools have their strengths, KWFinder is quickly becoming the preferred keyword search tool on the web, thanks to its comprehensive analytics and simple user interface.
If you prefer not to conduct keyword research yourself (and many marketers don’t, since it can be difficult), hire a professional internet marketing company to help you conduct keyword research for your brand.
Improve and target your ad copy
The relevance of your ad copy goes a long way toward determining the overall value of your PPC ads and having focused, relevant, and well-written ad copy can make or break your PPC ads. To ensure that your ad copy is meeting the mark, A/B test different ad content.
Ideally, the ad content you publish should be the material that earns the highest click-through-rate and displays the highest level of value to your audience.
Organize your keywords into ad-specific groups
After you’ve conducted some keyword research to locate the most relevant and productive keywords for your brand, go through and organize your selection into related groups to be used in specific ads.
In addition to ensuring that the keywords you include in your campaigns are relevant, this step also helps ensure you’re spotting gaps in your keyword strategy and filling them as needed.
Cull your keywords according to PPC results
While many of the best practices for running a successful PPC campaign and improving your Quality Score are positive (adding something or doing something new), this step involves subtracting something: namely, your irrelevant keywords.
In every PPC strategy, some keywords are irrelevant and serve only to waste your marketing budget and drag down your CTR.
With this in mind, spend some time on a regular basis evaluating your campaign and doing away with these search terms. In addition to benefiting your overall CTR, this will also allow you to focus more acutely on the search terms that are boosting your campaign rather than harming it.
Optimize all of your landing pages for the best user experience
User experience is a huge factor in a good PPC experience, and it can have an enormous impact on your Quality Score. With this in mind, ensure that you optimize your landing pages accordingly.
Each landing page connected to your PPC campaigns should offer a positive and streamlined user experience that remains relevant throughout. Anything less than this will only serve to damage your quality score.
Grow Your Business with Expert PPC Services
PPC can be tough, and, for many marketers, the quest to improve Quality Score is just one more thing to worry about.
Luckily, Thrive Internet Marketing offers a team of highly skilled PPC experts that can assist you with everything from improving your Quality Score in conducting targeted keyword research to improve the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
So, don’t worry about how you’ll manage to improve your Google Ads marketing all on your own, contact us for expert assistance, targeted advice, and a skilled team of professionals who care deeply about your online presence, success, and mobility.