The Google Quality Score is one of the most mysterious, and most important factors in your Google Ads experience. The Google Quality Score has a huge impact on how your website ranks with certain keywords, and therefore where your Paid Search result appears, if it appears at all. Paid Search is a vital tactic for digital marketing, and having a high Google Quality Score is a vital tactic for Paid Search. Although we still don’t know quite everything about how Google determines the quality score for each campaign or business, there are a number of methods to improve the quality score that digital marketers have full control over.
What Factors Affect the Google Quality Score?
There are a number of factors that can impact your Google Quality Score. In order to improve your score, it’s important to know what will need to be improved in the first place. There are three main factors that impact your quality score:
Expected Click-Through Rate
As we know, the click-through rate is the number of people who click on a link compared to the number of people who see the link (clicks/impressions x 10). Since you’re paying for these clicks and impressions, Google wants to know how worthwhile it is for them. The more clicks your website gets, the more money in Google’s pocket. This is done by looking at your previous Google Ads campaigns. Based on your success in the past, you’ll get a rating of below average, average, or above average.
Ad Relevance
The more relevant your ad is to the keyword you’re bidding for, the higher your click-through rate will be. Google will be more inclined to give the top spots to the most relevant ad. But beware: copy that’s too general will be rated below average.
Landing Page Experience
The landing page is where users will be taken when they click on a link. Google can also take the landing page into account when determining your quality score, and it does. Your landing page needs to be relevant and useful. Some ways that Google determines this are through bounce rates and site speed.
Knowing how Google operates and determines your Google Quality Score is important, but knowing how to improve your score will help you move forward and have more success with the quality score and paid search.
Be Thoughtful with Keywords
One of the best ways to improve your Google Quality Score is to be very thorough with your keywords. Making sure that only relevant keywords are put with each ad group. As stated before, the more relevant the keywords are to the ad, the higher your quality score will be. You should also include both long and short tail keywords in your campaigns, in order to cover all of your bases.
Write Your Copy Well
Don’t just take a few minutes to come up with something for the headlines and descriptions on your Google Ads. Make sure that you’re writing is both relevant and compelling for your Google ads. If your copy is too generic, it will have an effect on your Google Quality Score. So be sure to take some time and really think out what you’re wanting to write.
Use Negative Keywords
Negative keywords, or keywords that are specifically left out of an ad group or campaign, are an extremely useful tool in Paid Search Campaigns. Decreasing the number of different keywords that an ad group can appear for can help you increase the relevance of your ad, thus improving the quality score.
Have a Campaign Review Schedule
While you can technically set up campaign and leave it be, it’s much more beneficial to have a schedule to continually review your paid search campaigns. Keeping an eye on them is the best way to improve your quality score, because it’s the only way to know how your score is looking. You can also make changes and improve your campaign as it evolves.
Improve your Landing Page
One of the best and most effective ways to improve your Google Quality Score is to work on your landing page. The better, faster, and more relevant your landing page is, the higher your quality score will be. You can check out this blog for more tips on how to improve SEO on your website.
The Google Quality Score can seem intimidating since some of the factors are unknown, but as long as you take control of what you do know about the quality score, you can improve your score and have a higher ranking in paid search ads. The most important strategy in all of digital marketing is to control what you can, and the Google Quality Score is a great example of that.
Learn how Ascent can help with your Paid Search Campaign here.
