What Is A Quality Score On Google Ads

We already know that Google Ads are a popular form of PPC advertising. Being able to pay for a spot on search engine results pages is very useful, especially for small businesses that don’t have the time to achieve an organic search engine listing.

If you’re trying to perfect your PPC game with Google Ads you need to a proper understanding of Google Ads Quality Score. This is because the quality score has a big influence on the cost and effectiveness of your paid search campaigns.

What Exactly Is A Quality Score?

Quality score refers to the way Google measures the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC adverts. Once Google has gathered enough data, the keywords in your advertising account are given a score between 1 and 10 (with 10 being the best score).

This score is used to determine your cost per click. After being multiplied by your maximum bid, it is also used to determine your ad rank in the ad auction process.

Your Quality Score depends on a few core factors which include:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Relevance of each keyword to its ad group
• Landing page relevance and quality
• Ad text relevance
• Google Ads account performance history

While each of these components plays an important role in determining your quality score, the click-through-rate is the most significant. The reason is simple – when an ad gets a lot of clicks it means that users find it helpful and relevant. Google takes note of this and rewards your ad with higher rankings and lower costs.

How To Improve Your Quality Score

Since your Google Ads quality score determines where and how often your ads appear online, increasing your score is essential. Your quality score can be increased by streamlining a few key areas in your PPC efforts.

1. Keyword Research – Work on finding new, relevant keywords to add to your campaign. This should include long-tail keywords too because they are more specific and are known to increase overall traffic.

2. Keyword Selection – The keywords you use should always be directly related to the specific elements of your advertising campaign. It’s also useful to use keywords/phrases that are made up of a few words instead of just one. This is because internet users are more likely to search for a phrase and not a single word on its own.

3. Keyword Organization – Organize your keywords into groups that can be effectively tied to individual campaigns.

4. Refine Ad Text – Ensure that your advert copy is targeted to your specific ad groups. Ads with a more defined target audience get higher CTRs. This is one of the best ways to improve your quality score.

5. Optimize Landing Pages – Ensure that your landing pages contain your targeted keywords in its content. It’s a good idea to create a custom landing page that incorporates your targeted keywords for different ads.

6. Use Negative Keywords – Irrelevant Search terms are a drain on your budget. Research and identify these terms and phrases and exclude them from your campaign.

7. Advert Structure – Your ad campaigns should always be relevant to what you’re selling. When an ad campaign is more relevant and targeted the campaign, it increases the relevance of your keywords. It’s also a good idea to include keywords in the ad’s headline and display text.

8. Landing Page Load Time – It’s important for your adverts landing pages to load as fast as possible. Do a load speed test and see if you need to optimize the speed. Factors that tend to slow download speed are slow redirects, too many redirects, slow servers, and large page sizes.

Final Thoughts

Google’s quality score is primarily used as a measure of relevance. By restructuring your PPC ad campaigns into well-organized groups of keywords you can improve your quality score in no time. Spending a little extra time on keyword research, selection and organization will also improve the quality and specificity of your adverts. This will also increase your website traffic and allow you to target a more specific audience who are probably already searching for what you have to offer.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing’s Paid Advertising and Web Analytics Course will teach you everything that you need to know about the world of Google PPC. To learn about our other online digital marketing courses, please visit our website.