How to Improve your Quality Scores in Google Ads (AdWords)

 

Quality Score is one of the most tracked AdWords metrics for good reason. It’s a quick health check of your account and will quickly inform you if there is a problem.

 

Think of your quality scores like the dashboard in your car. It’s there to alert you if there is a problem with your car as you drive it. And like your quality scores, it may not prevent you from completing your journey if there is a red warning light, but it’s an indication that you need to get it checked out ASAP.

 

 

Quality Scores are determined by three factors: Expected Click Through Rate, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience. The status of each of these will determine your keyword quality scores.

 

There are three statuses to each three factors that affect your quality scores. These are:

 

Above Average
Average
Below Average

 

So, here are some tips to improve each factor to help improve your quality scores:

 

Expected Click Through Rate (CTR)

CTR is one of the most studied metrics. And that’s not surprising considering that it shows the relation between impressions and clicks. It’s one of the first metrics that tells you if something is wrong with your campaign.

 

However, the expected Click Through Rate is forward looking and is a prediction of how your ads will perform in the search results. Google calculates this based on many factors including how the keyword has performed in the past and the intent behind the search – among other things.

 

If your expected CTR is average or below average, you should look at updating your ads to make them more relevant.

 

Also make sure that the search terms you are appearing for are closely related to the keywords you are bidding on.

 

Ad Relevance

Google’s success is closely tied to its historic ability to provide relevant ad results. People go to Google for answers and they expect to find what they need in seconds. So it’s primary role is to make sure that all ads and results are relevant to users searches.

 

However, many merchants are only interested in making a sale and that sometimes conflicts with Google’s primary goal of providing relevance.

 

This is why Google awards advertisers with good relevance with higher rankings for less costs. And it’s the reason why Ad relevance is an important part of quality Scores.

 

If ad relevance is average or below average, then it’s important to make sure that your keywords, search terms and Ads are closely aligned.

 

One effective way to do that is to make sure your keyword or the users search term is included in the Headline. This is proven to increase relevance and click through rates and will help to bring them up to ‘Above Average’.

 

Landing Page Experience

It’s not enough to have relevant ads with high CTRs. Visitors need to have a great landing page experience that leads to more sales, leads, conversions or any other important action.

 

If visitors arrive and leave without viewing other pages or purchasing, then that would be due to a poor landing page experience. And this is evident in high bounce rates which are above 60%.

 

Ideally, you should aim for a bounce rate below 50%. You can start by making sure you are sending visitors to the right landing pages. Avoid sending them to the homepage, unless that has all the info that they need.

 

Also, make sure you deliver on the promise you made in the ad. Your visitors should not have to search through your website for info that they should get on the landing page.

 

Ensure that you have sufficient content or point them where to go for more. And include a call to action stating what action you want them to take whether it’s to download a report, purchase a product, send a message or other.