5 Ways to Improve Your Google AdWords Quality Score

by | Jul 16, 2015

Your Google AdWords Quality Score is Google’s grade of your ad’s overall quality and usefulness. The system is designed to ensure that only the highest quality ads rise to the top, while weeding out those that are of poor quality, spammy or fraudulent. Your Quality Score affects your ad auction eligibility, cost per click, and ad positioning, so it is extremely important to earn and maintain a high score.

To arrive at the Quality Score, Google analyzes three key metrics: click-through rate, relevance, and landing page experience. All three are important, but by far the biggest factor in your Quality Score is your ad click-through rate so that’s where you should focus the majority of your time and effort. Here are five steps to help you continually boost your Quality Scores.

1. Create a Congruent Path
The most important step to a high Quality Score and effective advertising is to create a congruent path. By that I mean your ad copy and your landing page copy must precisely match the keyword searched. When this happens, your click-through rate will improve, your ad relevance score will improve, and you’ll create a better landing page experience. In other words, you’ll kill 3 birds with one stone!

2. Create Keyword Groupings
Organize your keywords by similar phrases, and then divide each group into subgroups and, if necessary, sub-subgroups. This ensures that each grouping is tightly focused and makes it easier to create a congruent path mentioned above.

Remember, the closer the match between your keyword, your ad, and your landing page, the higher your relevance scores will climb.

3. Write High Quality Content
For both the ad and the landing page, write clean copy that is free of spelling or grammar mistakes. Create compelling headlines. Break information into easily digested chunks. Make sure your landing page is easy to navigate, clearly explains who you are and what your business does, and provides authoritative original information. Raise your credibility by providing accurate contact information, listing details about any relevant organizations or associations of which you are a member, and explaining your professional credentials.

4. Improve Your Call to Action
Calls to action are essential in both your ad copy and your landing page copy. The call to action tells visitors what to do next, from clicking on your ad to filling out a form on your landing page. In the ad, a strong call to action entices prospects to visit your landing page, which improves the click-through rate component of your Quality Score.

On the landing page, the call to action plays two roles. It improves your conversion rate, or the number of prospects who actually make a purchase or complete a webform. It also boosts the user experience component of your Quality Score by providing clear instructions.

5. Track Your Results
Tracking your results is a vital part of any successful Google AdWords campaign. To review your Quality Scores, you need to add an additional column to your Google AdWords Keyword report. Go to the Keywords tab in Google AdWords, then click on the “Columns” button, then select “Modify columns…” to get started editing your report.

Next, click on Attributes and then click on the “Add” link to the right of “Qual. score”. Click the Apply button and now your report will display your keyword Quality Scores.

Remember that it takes time for changes to make a significant impact on either your conversion rate or your Quality Score. If you make several changes at the same time, it can be difficult to determine the individual effects of each change. Make a first attempt at following these best practices, and then wait several days to see the results. As you make later tweaks, change only one or two things at a time. A bit of patience will help you see the true results of each tweak and help you decide where to focus your efforts.

source:http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/5-ways-improve-google-adwords-quality-score/