Who Can I Pay to Make Me a Website?
Picture this: It’s a typically hot and sunny Summer day, birds chirping on tree branches, the slow breeze coming through the curtains as a literal breath of fresh air. While drinking some cold drink to cool off, you open your laptop to find that your ads Quality Score is 1 out of 10.
Apart from the perfect day we described, the latter is a PPC marketer’s worst nightmare. We wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemies.
That is why one of the usual tasks for an ads expert is to raise the Quality Score as much as possible since it’s not just a bragging right. The reason for that is that it’s closely tied in with increasing your PPC profits and the position of your website and blog on the top page.
Having been around for over a decade and a half, Google’s Quality Score has proven itself a tried-and-tested method of analyzing and ranking ads, keywords, and landing pages. But it has come a long way. Initially, it was released in 2005 with the function of rating keywords in three main groups: Poor, OK, and Great.
Of course, like everything related to Google Ads, it has changed and improved over the years.
It’s also an excellent indication that your ads and website are performing well and vice versa. Looking at the big picture, keeping track of the Quality Score will help your business save time, money, and resources while at the same time utilizing the right keywords.
On the other side of the equation, the client gets better results as a product of their search.
To keep up with the times, we have created this pocket-sized guide on everything you need to know about Quality Score and what steps you can take to improve it.
Let’s get started.
To understand the quality score, we first need to understand the purpose of search engines.
They have only one goal: Show the most relevant information to clients in the best user experience possible.
It would be significantly more challenging to manage and provide rankings if all ads, keywords, and landing pages were equal (which they are not in any case). That is one of the reasons why Google introduced this feature.
In simple terms, Quality Score is a highly accurate estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Google themselves has noted: Higher ad quality generally leads to better performance, including better ad positions and lower cost.
So, to provide the best UX, Google is giving a significant advantage for advertisers with the most revelated ads with the highest possible quality. They do that by providing every single keyword within every Google Ads account a quality ranking, a combination of a few factors related to UX.
If you have high-quality keywords and more relevant landing pages, your ads will rank higher than your competition with poor-quality keywords.
Although we have already mentioned the importance Quality Score plays in Google’s algorithms, there are two main reasons why Quality Score is critical.
Google built Quality Score to determine how relevant the ad is with all of the factors mentioned below and compare them to other ad accounts that run ads with the exact keywords. If Google doesn’t think your ad is relevant, the ad either might show at a disadvantageous spot or not appear.
Google’s interest is to remain the #1 search engine on earth, so they use Quality Score to ensure that the most relevant ads get shown to what users search. All of this with the UX for the searchers to be as best as possible.
On the other hand, for advertisers, Quality Score is important because it’s directly linked to the success of the ad account. Also, Google uses it to determine the Ad Rank and your bid.
The higher the Ad Rank, the higher the ad position will be on Google. But that’s not the end of the store.
The ads still need to be relevant, and we need to offer the best overall UX possible. It is the perfect mix to get to that top first-page position and the bid.
When creating your ad strategy, a neat little trick is to separate a campaign from your brand’s keywords and name. You will receive a high ad rank and position because you can’t get more relevant than bidding on your business name. The competition would not be able to have high ad relevance giving you an excellent advantage.
If you have included a new keyword in your Google Ads account, the default quality score would be 6, considered average. Once the keyword has been included, there are a few Quality Score factors that Google considers to rate the keyword from 1 to 10.
Those factors are: Landing page experience, expected CTR, and ad relevance.
Each component is rated one out of three (above average, average, and below average). To accurately estimate these components, Google compares them with other advertisers who have bid on the exact keywords in the last 90 days.
Anything that’s not above average means that there is room for improvement.
Apart from the Quality Score factors of Google, landing page experience measures the landing page relevancy, page loading speed, and usability. For reference, the landing page is the page on your website that users land on once they click on the ad.
Through specific processes, Google looks at the account’s history performance and estimates the likelihood that a user who sees your ad will click on it. That is a great way to see whether your ads are relevant to the client’s search.
Also, another crucial part of Quality Score is ad relevance which measures how closely your ads match the keywords within your ad account. It also includes the ad copy that you are using, so make sure to make it as specific as possible.
Looking at the sections above, we can see a lot of components of the Quality Score. It will take much more work than editing the ad group or keywords to expect quantifiable results.
Doing some overall analysis would be helpful to see how we can increase the Quality Score. Make sure to go through all the steps below to determine your current performance, see what can be improved, and monitor the performance over time.
To help you out, we have listed the most effective ways of improving your quality score.
The three Quality Score components (Expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page UX) can help you see whether to update your ad text, keyword selection, and landing page content.
Aim for the “above average” score as a good rule of thumb on what is better than the competition. On the flip side, if you see “average” or “below average,” it’s time to review the ad, keywords used, and landing page UX.
For example, there might be a need to tweak the keyword to be a bit more compatible with your business and change the ad accordingly. Additionally, looking at where clients land on your website (i.e., the landing page) and mapping out the entire user journey will give you a better idea of what to add and where.
If you’re finding it difficult to start, remember: Give your users what they are looking for, and you will be rewarded with conversions and sales. Always think of the UX and focus on long-term performance goals for sustainability.
In the initial stage of the business, the pipeline is advertising, and this is where attracting as many people from the target audience is crucial. While targeting is a big part of this, another thing is how the ad looks and what you say to get them on the website, which is where the ad copy comes in.
In short: Use the best performing keywords within the ad group as well as the headline, description, and URL slug.
If a person searches for specific keywords and sees the same keyword on the ad, the likelihood of clicking on the ad is significantly higher than an ad without the keyword. It will positively impact CTR as well as ad relevance.
However, try to create an ad copy that would stand out and be natural when reading or speaking out loud. That is harder than it sounds.
As a pro tip, try to think of an old friend that doesn’t know about your business/website but is a part of your target audience. How would you sell it to them? You can use that farm, friendly and conversational tone in the ad copy and on the website.
Also, if you have different products/services that you are selling and doing ads for, make sure to use product or service-specific keywords on the landing page and the ad to increase the ad relevance. It will take time to set up, but it will pay off in the long run.
Once the user sees the ad and clicks on it, the next step of the pipe is the landing page, which raises a few questions for us. By troubleshooting, if the landing page is up to date, easy to use, not confusing for visitors, and in overall good condition.
Search engine bots crawl your website and perform an analysis on the website, as well as the metrics from past UX on the landing page, which then affects the Quality Score.
Therefore, we recommend starting with “stress-testing” the website by using Google Page Speed Insights and Google Mobile-Friendly Test. That will lead your dev team (or the company that you hire) to have a goal to work towards and improve upon to raise the Quality Score as much as possible.
Another thing would be adding the relevant keywords to the product/service and the keywords the visitors would use in the search engine while at the same time offering the information they need to stay on the page.
The last thing on the importance checklist is the landing page speed, for which we have decided on an entire blog post, which you can read by clicking here. In short, if the landing page takes more than a few seconds to load, the bounce rate will be significantly higher.
We have avoided this by optimizing the videos and images, deleting unnecessary HTML code, etc.
Probably the last thing that you excepted us to say, but here it goes! You might even wonder what negative keywords are.
You would use negative keywords when you don’t want a specific group of people to see your ad based on what kind of keywords they type.
All of this sounds odd and counters everything you have thought about keywords. While the general goal is to add as many of them to attract as many users as possible, negative keywords are helpful to increase your CTR, which is the main component of the Quality Score.
By using negative keywords, you let Google know that these people are not a part of your target audience, and the chances of them converting and being interested in your business are minimal. So you don’t want your ads to pop up for them because people don’t just click on the ad. After all, they are bored and have nothing better to do because they are interested in what you have to offer.
Ads must be as relevant as possible to searchers to reach your goals. That is why negative keywords are helpful. Plus, you will increase your Quality Score, which helps more people see your ads/website, which triggers a snowball effect.
A fantastic feature that Google Ads allows the ability to have expanded text ads, enabling you to run ads with longer ad copy and more words. So, 50% more characters to work with on your ads is beneficial, especially for Quality scores.
It also means using long-tail keywords that benefit your ad groups. As a result, it will make it simpler for your target audience to find you. The way this impacts your Quality Score is by improving your ad relevance.
To identify which ad is most relevant to the user’s search, Google established the Quality Score to keep its position as the world’s top search engine. And everything that we talked about so far in this blog post is meant to increase it. You are building towards that goal by improving components such as higher CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Usually, a better Quality Score means an overall lower average CPC and costs per ad, which can give you a competitive advantage.
To increase your Quality Score, you would need a way to measure results and analyze how your ads and landing pages perform. One of the things that you could do is look into Google Page Speed Insights and Google Mobile-Friendly Test for a better overall UX on your website.
Following the steps above and optimizing your ad accounts, ads and website will ensure that you are as close to the perfect Quality Score as possible. And if you want to learn more about how we can help you improve your Quality Score and business results, get in touch with us by clicking here.
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