Quality Scores - Your Golden Eggs

The Quality Score (rated 1-10) on the Google Adwords platform is much discussed, and equally mis-understood. If you know the secrets to elevation of the scores (higher is better) – it can be a game changer for your business. For example, the keyword quality score improvement will help on your overall costs of campaigns and CPC (cost per click), ad rankings and more. You’ll sleep better at night, having obsessed about it for months.

Consider these tips and resources to help improve your quality score for advertising with Google paid search.

1. What is the Google Quality Score?

Every keyword you bid on inside the Adwords system is assigned a score. It’s done real-time, and gets assigned once somebody executes a query on Google and clicks on your ad. It helps Google – to help you:

• Get your ad shown
• Reveal the cost if ad is clicked
• Increase or decrease ad ranking – what position to show your ad

Here’s what Google says about Quality Score:

“Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for everybody — advertisers, users, publishers, and Google too — when the ads we display match our users’ needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success”.

2. What about Relevance?

The main topic of discussion when “quality” is discussed on all search engines, and for Google in specific, is “relevancy”. Does the query match the expectation of the user? Does a link back to web-page match the link and is it topically relevant? (for SEO, search engine optimization). If so, you’ll have a much better chance to rank and get a boost.  The quality score looks at this important model, because ultimately, nobody should (and cannot) be able to simply buy your way into the first position for very long (unless you have seriously deep pockets, and don’t have a brain). It should always be considered, and having keywords tied into the ad copy itself, along with correct matching type (broad, phrase, exact) into campaigns and ad group, gives you a serious head start.  Example: If an ad is clicked 500 times at $2 dollars, Google makes more money if you have 1,000 clicks at $1.50, for example. So, Google wants the clicks, versus just high buys with ads that nobody clicks. (think about this important concept again!). The truth is – it’s set up so that Google, the searcher and the advertiser wins. Users find what they want, more traffic to you, lowered cost for advertiser, better ranking, and more money back to Google.

3. Does Google Reveal The Quality Score?

Inside the Adwords interface, you can see the Quality Score for each of your keywords. However, it’s an optional column that you have check off. The number shown is an approximate value, and a good average is 7, and very common. 1 (one) represents a poor quality score, 10 (ten) is optimum. Don’t obsess, just work through this article, and measure yourself.

4. Why is Quality Score Important?

Ad ranking (positions) on the results pages are important, since it affects click-through-rates (CTR) and bids.

Remember this formula: Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank.

A paid search specialist should spend time looking at options for improving quality scores because of the above.

5. Things You Can Do to Improve Your Quality Indicators

This list is not exhaustive, but will get you into positive territory, if followed.

• The historical Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of the ad matching keyword on Google (search network)
• The total account history – measure by the overall CTR to ads in total, including keywords
• The quality of your landing page
• Relevance matching factors from keywords to ads within ad groups
• Overall account performance in the geo area when ad shown

Google reveals these things to assist webmasters and advertisers help themselves. However, many of the critical low level factors and secrets are kept safe, so we make some assumptions along the way.  They can change the dials at any time, and not tell us.

We heave learned however, that the CTR of your keywords is the most critical influence on the QS (Quality Score) . The proof is shown because of ads clicked more over time have the biggest impact.  Furthermore, the relevancy of matching from query to ad, to landing page is very much part of this exercise. Landing pages themselves impact the QS in either direction, and you are serving yourself well if applying the right principles to landing page construction. More on that later.

6. Recommendations for fast campaign and landing page optimizations.

A) If somebody is searching for [chocolate cookies], you are helping scoring by providing close alignment of keywords to ad groups. The ad copy in your text should be tightly targeted. Small ad groups, with close relationships of keywords and matching types will help immensly. For example, you can create 3 adgroups to test “chocolate cookie B” (Broad), “chocolate cookie P” (phrase) and “”chocolate cookie E” (exact). Inside each ad group, you would use a limited set of keywords, from 1-10, for example. Also, make sure to include negative keywords. For example, at a higher level, a ‘cookie’ could also be an’ http cookie’ , and would not be related. A negative match type would not create an impression for that keyword, ie. your ad would not be shown.

B) Test, test, test – your ad copy. You must improve your click-through-rate (CTR), and it will improve quality. The copy in the ad is absolutely critical. We often will recommend adding 3-4 variations of the ad, pause 2 of them, and use the built-in A/B mechanisms to show the ads. Note: Make sure to remove the “optimize” setting within the campaign settings. It should allow you to monitor the balance of ads shown better. (Incidentally, “A/B” comes from the mail order business, where they would test the “A” version with a different headline or offer against the “B” version). You can do this only, and very quickly as well. You need 100-1,000 impressions, depending – to get valid data to work from. Don’t stop too soon, and don’t let it run ‘forever’ without changing and updating either. You will be putting money on the table, and giving it to Google instead. We call this the “Google Tax”. You don’t want that.

C) A compelling, clear action-oriented ad should also have a strong landing page to match. The topical and contextual relationships are very important.  Do not stuff keywords on the landing page, and use SEO principles to feed the machine.

D) Monitoring and validation. Google reporting allows a number of fields in “custom” settings, and you should add the Quality Score to keywords and ad groups.

E) Account quality. Deleting or pausing poor performers is recommended. In fact, deleting them completely is likely more preferred, but you should keep track of them somewhere. Pausing is easier, and less work of course. If you have a lot of ad groups, you should look at overall quality indicators and get a sense for “global” views, not just the “detail” view levels.  Keep in mind that a high quality performing platform doesn’t change overnight, so make sure to work with the system, and track it.

F) Geographical impact. You may find great CTRs in Chicago, whereas similar ads get poorer results in Los Angeles. Try to discover where this happens, and fix it.

G) History and testing. Some are afraid to touch highly performing account structures. We agree you have a goal in mind – for all your efforts – but online marketing and Adwords is all about testing and tuning. Testing ads, keywords, landing pages, bids – all is an ongoing exercise, and you are never truly done. Some will set up completely new, different Adwords accounts, and test in a different environment, but it’s not the same.  Also, any time you add new campaigns, you don’t automatically get the benefit of a quality account. Expect to build these out each time, and tune, watch them as before. As you build out new campaigns, we offer this advice: “start high, and work downwards”. You’ll know from keyword research what traffic is available, but it’s not until you launch into your (niche) marketplace, that will truly know. Bidding high, and working downwards is a better strategy. You are showing Google you are not afraid to test, and you are indeed a “Google Adwords Player”!

BONUS: Make sure to read Google Advertising Policies, and Landing Page Guidelines.

Finally – a great video by Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google. It captures the awesome engine that is the world’s most profitable advertising platform, the keyword auctioning system: Google Adwords.