How to Improve Quality Score

How to improve Quality Score is a question many small or medium companies won’t even consider posing.  Is Quality Score something to do with ISO??!!!

But first, if you are interested in our services at Digital Sales, check out this quick video:

Very many companies will set up a PPC campaign and let it run, burning cash and hoping to get digital leads, and they will they get leads, but at what cost?  And the reason businesses don’t ask about Quality Score is for this very reason, ‘its working, we are getting leads’.  Nothing to worry about!!

And there are many digital marketing agencies which will set up an account and ‘job done’, and I can appreciate why.  Some companies and business owners just don’t know anything about Quality Score and its implication, and so they don’t value it and aren’t that bother about paying a premium in-order to properly set up and manage a successful PPC Campaign.  It should be the role of an Account Manager to educate their client, sell the value of continually monitoring and addressing their PPC campaign.  The long term gain can be substantial.

So, what are the factors that dictate a Quality Score, why is Quality Score Important and how you can improve Quality Score?

How to Improve Quality Score – The Factors Involved

Think of Google trying to combine two goals, their primary goal we believe is providing their customers with the right providers or relevant information – satisfying the users demands.  If Google fails to do this, users of their search engine may try alternative search engines.

Secondly, Google are in the business of making as much money as possible and more happy customers equals more searches and more users equals more advertisers.  So, they want advertisers to spend and keep spending.

So, all in all, if you think about the two points above, serving their customers with the most relevant suppliers,….the factors that impact a Quality Score are:

• Ad Copy Relevance
• Relevance of Keywords to ads
• Relevance of keyword and ad to the search query
• Landing Page Relevance & Experience
• And in the back end, historical factors are also considered, such as: Historical Click-True Rate and Account History.

So, why is your Quality Score important to you, the advertisers?

How to Improve Quality Score – Why is it Important?

• You can save a serious amount or money – if your Quality Score is 10, you could receive a reduction in cost by up to 50%. If your Quality Score is below 5, you could be charged up four hundred per cent more
• You can outbid your competitors and win more business, increasing your conversion rate
• More traffic will also impact positively on your SEO organic position.

So, to the key question, how to improve Quality Score?  See the far right column, this is the Quality Score column in AdWords:

How to Improve Quality Score – How to Improve your Quality Score

The real deal maker is CTR (Click-Through Rate), this has the biggest influence on Quality Score, so how do you increase your CTR?  Along with CTR, the landing page according to adAlysis is weighted at 39% of the Quality Score algorithm.  So, think of how you can influence a user to click into your ad and when they are on your website, are they staying on your site long, is there a strong call to action, has it got a good download speed, does the landing page relate to relevance of the advert?

In simple terms, in order to improve your Quality Score, you must address: Landing Page Experience, CTR and Ad Relevance…Here are some tips on how to improve Quality Score:

1)

Just like On Page SEO, give the user content specific to that person’s search.  What is the Keyword String the user is searching and create an advert for that specific keyword.  So, if you have identified 100 keywords for your business, create a single ad group for each keyword.

2)

Include the Keyword in the Headline Ad and include the Keyword in the url display.  Two actions which will satisfy the algorithms need for ad relevance.

3)

Split testing Ad Copy – change your USP, the Offer, the CTA, use of words, etc. test what has the highest CTR.  So, you will need a good strategy and apply some split testing scripts.

4)

Insert different types of Social Proofing, Influence and scarcity into your advert copy, check out this article on Social Proofing.  What is your product or service ‘value proposition’?  Reduce the fear or risk, ‘Free Returns’, ‘30 day return’, ‘industry accredited’…

Applying these sales techniques will definitely increase your click through rate and….wait for it…your Quality Score!

5)

Ad Extensions – make your ad look big and add more credibility – bigger means more space on the display taken up by your advert, which will increase your CTR.  Extension such as: Sitelinks, Google Plus Reviews, Call Extensions, Location Extensions, etc.

6)

Ensure you also have mobile ad extensions, especially for the ‘consumer’ sector.  Mobile sitemaps should be reduced in length to about 12-15 characters (however, stick to 25 characters for desktop). So, list mobile sitelinks and assign them to mobile preference.

7)

Landing page speed, make sure your website has a very high download speed, as close as possible to 100%.  Undertake a Page Speed test here.  Ideally you want a landing page in the 90% bracket, see our Client:

8)

Build dedicated landing pages that relate to the Keyword string.  Ideally, you don’t want one landing page for all your adverts.  Take this example: Accord Windows, homepage: https://www.AccordWindows.ie/ – the homepage has a page title with ‘Window Repairs’ and ‘Door Repairs’ in it and some keyword repetition throughout the homepage.  And holds a Quality Score of 10 for ‘Door Repair’ and 7 for Window Repairs.

If you notice the User Experience within the website, the CTA is on every page, above the fold, so, take this page, which is optimized for ‘Glass Repairs Dublin’: https://www.AccordWindows.ie/glass-repairs-dublin.php – this url would be the Landing Page for the keyword on AdWords for: Glass Repairs Dublin, you can guess the Quality Score!!??  So, Website Design and UX is critically important if you plan on undertaking PPC campaigns in the future.

Need help to Improve your Quality Score? Your PPC Campaigns, Digital Sales and Marketing?…Contact Digital Sales

If you are a company that wants to build a world class website, need help with your organic search position, your PPC Campaigns, Digital Strategy or generating online sales……do the necessary!!!…contact the Digital Sales team direct send us a mail at: info@DigitalSales.ie, see our contact us page for our office locations.

Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales

Post Grad Dip. User Experience (UX), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS