How would you grade your Google Adwords account? Targeted campaigns with well written ads, specific landing pages and keyword level bids will have you well on your way to a passing grade. Poorly designed campaigns with generic ads pointing at your homepage will have you sliding toward failure.
Ultimately, the grade that counts is the one that Google gives to your Adwords account, known as Quality Score. Google calculates Quality Score on a variety of factors and then applies it to each of your keywords. In general, as your Quality Score increases, Google will reward you with lower minimum bids and better positioning for your ads. Google developed Quality Score as a way to ensure advertisers are creating the best accounts possible so that users are getting the best search experience possible.
How Google
Determines Quality Score
There are several components that make up your Quality Score. Naturally, Google doesn’t share everything that makes up Quality Score with advertisers. The factors that Google does share are invaluable for improving Quality Score and your overall account performance.
• Clickthrough Rate (CTR) – Your account’s CTR is one of the most important factors in establishing Quality Score. Clickthrough Rate is the number of clicks your ads receive divided by the number of impressions it gets. New ads need time to establish their CTR, so it’s important to set your bids high enough to give Google solid data for determining your Quality Score. An ad on the second or third page of search results is going to have less CTR than an ad appearing on page one. This can have a negative impact on Quality Score.
• Relevance – The keywords in your ad group should tie in directly with your ad, which should tie in directly to your landing page. Divide keywords into different categories and write your ad text to reflect the main theme of your keyword group. If you’re selling iPods, clearly mention them in your ad text, then take the user directly to your iPod product page.
• Account History – If you are a current Adwords advertiser, take a moment to review your past Clickthrough Rates. If your account has performed poorly over a long period of time, a new, well designed ad group may still initially struggle with Quality Score because of the account history. In extreme cases,
it might be worth creating a whole
new account.
• Landing Page Quality – A well structured account won’t perform if it’s sending users to a poorly designed web site. Does your site have fresh, original content? Is it easy to navigate? Are you being transparent in defining your business to consumers? Does your site load quickly? The answers can impact your Quality Score.
Making Quality Score Work For You
Advertisers can find information on their Quality Scores directly on the keyword and ad pages in each ad group. However, it’s not shown by default; click on the “customize columns” link and choose “show quality score” to add the column to your current view.
If your Quality Scores are poor, restructure your account to improve relevancy. Say you were an electronics retailer and you sold televisions, computers and cell phones. A bad set up would be to have keywords for all 3 categories in one ad group, with a very general ad (think: Buy all your electronic gadgets here!!) that linked to your home page. Users wouldn’t be sure if you sold their product because you don’t mention specifics, so you’d probably get less clicks. This is low Quality Score waiting to happen!
A better way is to make each category a campaign and each brand in that category an ad group. Placing keywords in the ad text targets the ads better and sends the user straight to that sub category landing page. It’s a better Quality Score and a better user experience.
Google is trying to help advertisers improve their accounts. When your PPC is well organized, it provides better results for Google users. They’ll find exactly what they were looking for and your campaigns will convert more often. Optimize your Quality Score and you’ll be graduating with honors in no time!
By Jean Lloyd
jeanl@ebizinsider.com
