The Importance of Google AdWords Quality Score

When engaging in paid search marketing using Google AdWords, a number of components contribute to maximizing your marketing investment.

This post takes a look at your AdWords Quality Score and how a variety of factors combine to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query.  A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance.

In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC). That’s what we’re after, the best possible position/ranking with the lowest possible cost.

Google AdWords Quality Score Factors

When creating a new ad, the most important Quality Score factors are:

1. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in it’s ad group
2. The relevance of the ad text/keyword to the search query
3. Other factors like the URL relevance and landing page relevance

Having all of these factors match the query as closely as possible will increase the ad’s initial opportunity to appear on the search engine results first page.  If the ad was written well, then searchers will click on it resulting in even more quality score benefits like:

1. A high ad click-through rate
2. A high display URL click-through rate
3. A high account level click-through rate

Raising the quality score means you can lower your bid while maintaining strong traffic to your website.

Example: Quality Score Making A Difference

One of the primary accounts I manage has a cost-per-click (CPC) maximum bid limit of $1.00.  Unfortunately, they also have strong industry competition, so keywords for many of their services are priced at a premium, much higher than our $1.00 limit.

Focusing on long tail keywords will help, of course, but that alone won’t solve the volume issue.  By following generally well know practices for increasing Quality Score, I was able to reach the first page along side ads paying a much higher CPC.  Thanks to a solid Quality Score, my $1 ads were competing with $2 ads.

Does it take a significant time to accomplish this?  Yes, of course it does… but maybe not as much as you think.  And in this particular case, the efforts were well worth it.

Just as a refresher, let’s take a look at an example of the basic ways I was able to maximize my Quality Score.  I’ll use “widgets” as an example ad:

Keyword: Widgets

Example Ad To Maximize Quality Score

The Four Keys To A Higher Quality Score

In the above example the following adjustments to the ad to improve the Quality Score:

1. Make the headline match the ad exactly.  This will mean making at least two ads  (for testing) for EVERY high traffic keyword.

2. Repeat the keyword in the ad copy.

3. The display URL page should have the same title as your keyword.

4. Make sure the destination page has your keyword (and other ad copy) early in the body text.

If you’ve done this correctly, you’ll have twice as many ads as keywords.  You’ll also have a near 1:1 ratio of Ad Groups and keywords.   Let me give you another example:

Keyword: Black Widgets

Most search marketers would put the Black Widgets keyword in the Widgets Ad Group.  However, if Black Widgets is a $2.25 first page bid estimate, the ad above won’t stand a chance with a $1.00 max bid.

You’ll need to create a new ad group and a new ad like the one below.

Second Quality Score Example Ad

So yes, this can become a daunting project.  Imagine having to create 20,000 ad groups and 40,000 ads for a customer with 10,000 SKUs.  It might seem easier just to increase the bid, but is it the right thing to do?  For me it wasn’t even an option.

If you need help improving your ad’s Quality Score and Google AdWords performance, give us a shout.