How to improve your PPC quality score
20 May 2019
20 May 2019
If your aim is to master PPC, a strong understanding of Quality Score essential, but what many may not realise is that there is more at play with it than meets the eye.
Many people working in digital marketing will have come across the term ‘Quality Score’ at some point or another. If your aim is to master PPC, a strong understanding of Quality Score essential, but what many may not realise is that there is more at play with it than meets the eye.
In a nutshell, Quality Score is Google’s rating of the overall user experience that your ads and landing pages provide when users search for your keyword(s). It’s essentially a guide for whether your ads and landing pages are useful to someone looking at your advert, rather than as a strict code to adhere to. As there’s no strict code, most people have different opinions regarding how to optimise your Quality Score. However, there are a number of common factors that are known to affect Quality Score, and being aware of these factors can help you to improve it if you notice that your chosen keywords are not doing so well. Here are our top tips for improving Quality Score.
Targeted ad groups elevate the relevancy between the search query and the ad; therefore, your ad groups should be specific and related to the keywords it contains. All keywords in an ad group should share similar meanings.
The solution to getting this part right is to group keywords by theme and then segment these into subgroups. Then, write targeted ad and landing page copy for each ad group to improve landing page relevance.
You are able to check your Quality Score on the ad group level, so you should focus on restructuring all ad groups that have keywords with low Quality Scores.
Does the ad make sense if it appears when someone searches for a specific keyword? How likely is someone to click your ad when Google serves it for the keyword they type in? Ad relevance is essential in improving Quality Score, so always make sure that of your ads all have unique headlines, unique descriptions and that they relate to the keywords you are targeting.
To further boost your Quality Score, we would always recommend introducing Responsive Search Ads where possible. With Responsive Search Ads, you are able to add up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. This means that Quality Score can be improved by adding in more keyword variations and reducing the risk of duplication, while at the same time creating more unique copy.
Additionally, when creating Responsive Search Ads, Google also provides useful tips to improve both relevancy and uniqueness (as shown below) resulting in improved ad strength.
Does the information on the landing page correspond to what the ad is offering, and vice versa? The general rule is that keywords, ad copy and landing page should align – all of which contribute to ad relevance. The majority of the keywords you are targeting should also be on the landing page, and higher search volume keywords should be included in the ad copy. Landing pages must also contain keywords related to that of each ad group.
However, landing page experience isn’t just reliant on the relevancy of the keywords and ads - site speed is also extremely important. We could have all the best keyword, ad and landing page relevancy but if the site is slow the Quality Score will suffer. Make sure that the mobile site speed is prioritised and optimised, as most of the traffic will be mobile users. If your page load times are slow, make sure to work on decreasing them!
Quality Score value tells us how relevant Google thinks our keywords, ads, and landing pages are in combination. The lower your Quality Score, the more you’ll pay per click, so it’s essential that you work to improve it. So, if you can improve your Quality Scores, you stand to save (and even make) more money!
Want to find out how a Google Ads campaign can help boost your business? Get in touch with us today!