Jun

How To Score a 10 On Google Quality Score

By Sid

google quality score On a recent PPC campaign for a client I worked pretty hard to ensure I had a good quality score for the Google ads.

The good news is that none of the campaign ad pages came in below a 7/10, and about a third of the ad group keywords had a 10 out of ten.

The bad news is that I can’t figure out for the life of me why some were rated a 10 and others “only” a seven. The campaign is new, so that’s probably a factor. But here’s the most baffling part – I can’t figure out why some of the 10’s were rated so high. Here’s what happened… (Let me know what you think).

Why is a 10/10 Quality Score Good?

When Google calculates what you’ll pay for an ad and where you’re positioned on the page, they use what they call a landing page quality score. That is, the higher your score, the higher you’ll rank and the less you’ll pay.

It’s a complicated formula that takes into account your maximum bid price, your click through rate, and your landing page quality score. An ad with a 10/10 quality score that has a good click through rate will display ahead of an ad with a low quality score and a higher bid price.

You can get your ads placed higher at a lower price point by creating ads that people click and by having a higher quality score.

Here’s what Google says:

About Quality Score

A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query — that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad. Quality Score is used in several different ways, including:

influencing your keywords’ actual cost-per-clicks (CPCs)

estimating the first page bids that you see in your account

determining if a keyword is eligible to enter the ad auction that occurs when a user enters a search query

affecting how high your ad will be ranked

In general, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the better your ad position.

Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for everybody — advertisers, users, publishers, and Google too — when the ads we display match our users’ needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.

How Does Google Create The Quality Score?

Here’s what they say counts:

The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network — not on Google

Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account

The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group

The quality of your landing page

The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group

The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query

Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown

Other relevance factors

Here’s What I Did…

My client has very little history with Google ads, and the campaign was completely new. The product he was selling was in a well-defined niche. We came up with 47 highly-targeted keyword phrases that related directly to the product. We could have used more, of course, but I wanted the ads to result in sales, which translates to “relevance.”

We created one unique landing page for each keyword phrase in a subdirectory of his main blog site. This does two things: adds some “credibility” to the landing page; and it creates more traffic to the site.

The keyword phrase was scattered throughout the page (not stuffing, just scattered) in places that made sense. Each separate landing page had the keyword phrases in the same place on the page. Otherwise, the page content was identical on each page.

We had one ad group per keyword. The first line of the ad was the keyword phrase. This ensured that the keyword was always relevant to the ad in its ad group and matched the keyword to the search query.

Here’s What Happened…

One day after launching, I checked the quality scores. Many were 10/10, and the rest were 7/10. Of those that scored a 10, some showed on the first page and had impressions, while others didn’t have a high enough maximum price to show on the first page.

Because I know that the landing pages are virtually identical and the keywords were always relevant to the ad groups, I can honestly say that I don’t know why some scored a 10/10 and others a 7/10.

All things being equal, the only factor I can think of that may come into play was something I didn’t mention earlier….

On the bottom of every landing page is a list of five article links. I added 10 articles to the subdirectory where these ads live, and the program I use rotates the article links on the bottom of every page.

It may be that at the time Google checked the page for relevancy, the articles that showed at the bottom were MORE relevant to the keyword phrase, and that’s what gave that keyword a quality score of 10.

What’s Next…

I need to let the ads run for a few more days and check the quality scores again. They DO change, as Google calculates the quality score every time the keyword matches a search query. I’ll see if they go up… or down, and will let you know what I discover.