Those of you running Adwords campaigns will probably already know that Google assigns what they call “Quality Score” to each ad in a campaign.
Quality Score affects your position in the paid search results and how much you pay per click, so it is an important element of your campaigns. Get it right and you will be paying less per click than your competitors for higher positions.
Quality Score is determined by three factors:
- Click Though Rate
- Ad Relevance – how relevant the ad text is to the search query.
- The Landing Page – Google uses a similar algorithm to its organic search to determine a landing page’s relevance and reputation.
So what can you do to maximise your quality score?
1. Structure your campaigns into highly targeted ad groups.
Ideally, you should be splitting your campaigns into one ad group per keyword. This way you can include the exact search keyword in the ad text once or more. If this is too complex a structure, try and keep the individual ad group keywords lists as small as possible, and preferably variations of each other, eg:
“green widget, green widgets, dark green widgets.”
2. Target your Landing Pages.
The more targeted the copy on your landing pages to the search keywords the better. While it is often not practical to build a landing page for every single ad group, it is a good idea to build keyword-themed landing pages. For example if you are selling widgets in four different colours, why not build a landing page for each colour?
If you want to check what keywords Google sees your landing pages as being relevant to, use the Site Related Keywords feature of the Adwords External Keyword Tool.
Just click on the website content radio button, enter your url and you will see the keywords that Google thinks your page is most relevant for. Match these to your most productive keyword terms and your quality score should increase.
3.Optimize your whole site
If your site is liked by Google, your quality score is likely to go up. Google’s own Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines are a good point to start from. Basically, Google wants your site to be easy to navigate, trustworthy (display your contact details, privacy policy etc), and relevant to the subject you are advertising on.
Once you get these three factors right, you should see good quality in your campaigns, and start paying less for those all-important clicks!
