Quick guide to Google Ads quality score:
What is Quality Score? What does it mean and why is it important?
The effectiveness of your PPC campaign can be at the mercy of how high your Google Ads quality score is. Whether you’re setting up a PPC campaign for the first time, or optimising a current campaign, you need to know about quality score. This article will explore what quality score is and why it matters, giving you a good, all-round understanding to enable you to carry out more successful PPC campaigns.
What is Google Ads quality score?
Google Ads quality score is a measurement system set in place by Google to determine the relevancy of a keyword, based on past ad auction data. The keywords are scored out of ten, with ten being the best. If your quality score is “-“or (0) do not worry, it just means there’s currently not enough data for google to score this particular keyword and this can change over time. It’s important to acknowledge that the quality score given is not a ranking but an indicator of whether you are using the best components in your ad to drive as much traffic as possible to your website or landing page. Your quality score is made up of three main components: expected click through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Why is Google Ads quality score important?
Google is the World’s leading search engines, taking 86.6 percent of the search engine market. With such an excellent reputation to uphold, keeping its search engine results relevant is key. Google’s quality score helps in achieving this by providing users with relevant advertisements that complement their search terms.
Google's ad auction is based on cost per click (CPC), meaning Google only profits from this model if a user clicks on an advertisement. This is why Google filters through advertisements that are relevant to the users’ search enquiries to increase organic click-through rates.
Cost Per Conversion (CPA) sometimes referred to as Cost Per Acquisition/Action is a lot different from Cost Per Click (CPC) and is the metric that measures the cost of a user taking action, whether it be making a purchase of a particular product, getting in touch, or signing up to a free trial. However, since more users will simply click rather than click and then take action, the Cost Per Conversion is at a higher rate than the Cost Per Click.
Google’s quality score determines the Ad Rank, which is a value that is used to calculate your ad’s page position. Google’s ads ranking considers different variables such as the competitiveness of an auction, the bid amount and ad quality, as well as factors on the user’s side, like the device they are using and the location they are searching. If your competitor has a higher bid than you, you could still win a higher positioned ranking at a lower price, through having a better quality score.
For digital marketers, Google’s quality score is a key metric when it comes to advertising through Google as it gives guidance on which keywords qualify to enter an auction, and as a result show up for a user’s search query on the google search engine.
How can you improve your quality score
Improving your quality score doesn’t just happen in a matter of seconds. It’s something you have to keep working at to improve and boost your ratings. Here are a few key areas that you should focus on to increase your google quality score:
- Optimise Ad Text
Optimising and refining PPC ad copy to target specific ad groups is a great way to improve your quality score and receive a higher click-through rate.
- Keyword research
Carrying out keyword research means discovering new relevant terms to include in your ad campaign.
- Adding negative keywords
Ongoing research to acknowledge and excluding irrelevant keywords is helpful to avoid irrelevant search terms wasting your campaign ad budget
Grouping your keywords
Having your keywords organised into groups allows you to filter your keywords through individual ad campaigns, which allows you to target a wider audience.
- Improve your landing page experience
For a great user experience, landing pages must be fast to load and well organised with relevant keywords and clear navigation
Regardless of what you spend on your PPC ad campaign, Google quality score monitors relevance, so by improving your quality score with a well-organised PPC campaign and organised, relevant keywords, a lower bid with more relevance can overtake the higher-paying competitor.
If you’re looking to attract new audiences and increase traffic to your website, get in touch with one of our PPC Experts today.
