The key to a successful Google Adwords campaign is optimising to increase and maximise Quality Score.
In this post, we will show you the key elements that make up Google’s Quality Score.
So firstly, why does Google have a Quality Score?
It’s a way for Google to balance the interests of all parties in the on-line advertising ecosystem.
What is it?
Essentially, quality scores influence how much advertisers pay per click. Google awards each keyword with a quality rating of 1 – 10 (1 being poor – not relevant – and 10 being good – relevant). It’s used to calculate your actual CPC and multiplied by your maximum bid to determine your ad rank in Google’s auction.
What contributes to the scoring?
The main element is click through rate (CTR), followed by the relevance of a text ad and landing page. Part of my job is to analyse and improve keyword CTR, with a relevant ad that includes the keyword in the headline or description, directing the user to the most relevant page of the site. Below shows the importance of CTR and how it impacts on CPC.
In this example you can see where CTR begins to drop, the CPC increases. Then towards the end, CTR lifts again and CPC reduces. There’s a reason why this happened. We started to see irrelevant search queries coming in from our keyword, so we added negative keywords to increase relevancy which lifted the keyword CTR.
To continue optimising and improving QS the following is essential in everyday PPC campaign management:
- Keyword organization
- Refine and test ad copy
- Optimise landing page content
- Apply negative keywords
Final thought
To conclude, Quality Score is a measure of relevance, and improving keyword Quality Score is a matter of structuring your PPC campaigns in a way that allows the keyword and ad to be relevant. Highly targeted keywords and organization will naturally improve the quality and relationship of your ads and website content, allowing you to target your specific audience likely to convert.