5 Ways to Increase Quality Score in Google AdWords
You probably already know how important your Google AdWords Quality Score is, because the higher your ad is scored, the more relevant your ad and landing page is to a search query. A good Quality Score means a higher CTR (click-through-rate) – and this is the aim of the game when it comes to any PPC (pay-per-click) campaign.
Knowing your Quality Score needs to be higher is all well and good, but how do you actually go about increasing it? There are certain factors that affect an ad’s Quality Score, and certain steps you can take to improve those factors.
Before we get onto the good stuff though, it’s important to know exactly where your Quality Score lives. The screenshot below is from a client’s AdWords account. In order to view an ads quality score, you need to select the ‘Keyword’ tab. If the Quality Score column is not already visible, you will need to select the ‘Columns’ dropdown menu and then select ‘Modify columns…’
Here are 5 ways you can Increase Quality Score in Google AdWords
1. Use long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are a really effective way of increasing your Quality Score. They’re highly specific and therefore better for pre-qualifying your traffic, higher converting, and less competitive – which all added together helps you boost your ad relevance and therefore your Quality Score!
2. Work on your click-through rate
A huge part of the Quality Score is based on Google’s algorithm that forecasts your ad’s click-through rate (CTR), so you should be doing what you can to optimise your average CTR. The higher your expected CTR is, the higher your Quality Score will be. Google wants to know that its users are satisfied with the ad results they see when they search, and CTR is the perfect metric to measure that. So with any ad you run, consider everything that’s going to increase your CTR, including a compelling headline and the URL of your landing page (does the URL itself have your keywords in, for example?).
3. Ensure your ads are highly targeted
Another of the ways you can improve that CTR is through the text of your ads themselves, making sure they’re fully optimized and highly targeted. Look at things like producing high-quality, targeted copy that reads professionally, split testing your copy to make sure it’s as tight as possible, and writing more ads (while keeping the quality) to prove you’re the solution to the audience you’re targeting.
4. Study best practices…
…and make sure you stick to them! Best practices are ‘best’ for a reason, so keep up-to-date with what you should (or shouldn’t!) be doing. Examples could relate to PPC marketing (like geo-targeting), landing page optimization (like making the page responsive across all devices), or anything else that is relevant to Quality Score.
5. Make PPC work a priority!
It’s no good following these tips if you’re not putting the work into your PPC ads the rest of the time, because you need to be active if you’re looking for AdWords success. If you’re not working consistently to improve and optimise your account, any work you do in trying to improve your Quality Score will just be firefighting rather than proactively boosting your chances of a good score.
A high AdWords Quality Score means you’ll pay less for traffic, create good traction early on in your campaigns, and ultimately expand the areas your traffic comes from, so doing what you can increase that score is essential for your success!