What is the Google Quality Score?
Google Quality Score is a number from 1 to 10 that shows how relevant is your keyword to a particular search query.
Google Quality Score is a metric to determine how to place ads. If you’ve experience of Google AdWords, you may across the phrase ‘Quality Score’.
Google describes this quality score as an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Google quality score is all about the quality of the keywords in your content.
These keywords should ultimately provide a high-quality experience to end-user. Google quality score brings some serious benefits.
The higher quality ads can lead to lower CPC and it can increase your chances of visibility through investing time and effort, but it can maximize your budget. The lower quality ads can lead to higher prices and lesser ad positions.
Google makes money from clicks, so if your ad is unlikely to get clicks and ad with low scores not often seen. High-quality ads benefit both you as well as Google.
Google quality score will affect how your Google AdWords PPC ads perform and how much you’ll pay for each click. Google quality score is important to ensure that your ad copy aligns with keywords and landing page.
Quality score will help searchers to know what to expect from your landing page when they click on your ad.
Google quality score data that you can use are as follows:-
- Quality Score
- Landing Page Experience
- Ad Relevance
- Expected CTR
- Quality Score (historical)
- Landing Page Experience (historical)
- Ad Relevance (historical)
- Expected CTR (historical)
The interpretation of the Google quality score is as under:-
- 1-4 – Bad Quality Score. Your ads are at a disadvantage in the bidding
- 5-7 – Good Quality Score. Your ads are relatively unaffected in the bidding
- 8-10 – Great Quality Score. Your ads are at an advantage in the bidding
Quality Score is a very important element of any Google AdWords campaign.
Google Quality Score is an algorithm that takes into account the few factors:-
# Keyword’s Expected click-through-rate (CTR) – The expected CTR is based on the keyword’s past CTR or how often that keyword led to clicks on your ad
# Display URL’s CTR – How regularly you received clicks with display URL
# Account History – It’s an overall CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
# Quality of Landing Page – Its depends on landing Page relevance, transparency, and easy-to-navigate
# Keyword / Ad Relevance – How much relevant is your keyword to ads
# Keyword / Search Relevance – How much relevant is your keyword to searchers
# Geographic Performance – How successful your account has been in the targeting regions
# Ad’s Performance on a Website – How well your ads’ doing on your website and similar websites
# Targeted Devices – How well your ads have been performing on different types of devices such as desktop/laptops, mobile devices, and tablets
# Quick Bounces – How often someone goes to your website and quickly leaves and reloads the search results. Google rewards to the highly targeted campaigns and most relevant Adgroup to the searchers by giving a higher quality score.
Advertiser will pay less for an average CPC when Google takes the quality score as well as CPC bid into account. Quality score is shown within Google AdWords next to all your keywords.
There are many reasons for a keyword having a low-quality score such as CTR, relevance to the rest of the keywords in Adgroup, Ad text, etc.
What is Ad Rank –
Ad Rank is the actual real-time score of Google that is used to decide when and where ads show up. Google quality score is an evaluation of Ad Rank score.
It gives you an idea about the performance of a combination of your keyword, ad, and landing page in AdWords’ bidding system.
The Ad Rank is calculated on the basis of your bid, Google quality score, and ad extensions. It’ll determine where your ad shows up.
The quality of the Ad and landing page plays a key role in determining Ad Rank each time bidding for a search query.
Ad Rank – Max CPC x Google Quality Score
A good quality score improves the Ad Rank. Two advertisers X & Y place Max CPC bid of $7.
Advertisers X & Y have a quality score of 4 and 8 respectively with Ad Ranks 20 & 40. Advertisers Y will win the bid as it has a higher Ad Rank. It’s true that a higher Ad Rank will always get a better Ad position.
Why Google Quality Score Matter –
For Advertisers – Google quality score ensures that advertiser’s ads are shown to relevant searchers which will increase their ROI.
For Searchers – Quality score helps ensure the most relevant ads are displayed at the top of the search results.
For Google – Quality score is a way to achieve the best experience for advertiser and users.
The Components of Google Quality Score –
Here are three important components which define Google quality score:-
# Ad Relevance – The grade assigned to this category is an indication of how related your keywords are to the Ads that will display in that Ad group. Ad relevance refers to how relevant your ad is to keyword.
Ad relevance also affects the quality score which measures how closely your ads match your keywords. A keyword status will measure how much keyword is related to your ads.
There are three separate grades that can be given to the different components of Google quality score: Above Average, Average, and Below Average.
You need to build an ad that would be the relevant and valuable message to someone searching for the specific keywords in the Ad group. It’ll give you the average or above-average grade.
You need to rewrite ads or break-up ad groups into more specific ad groups if keywords have below-average ad relevance.
You should make ad groups very specific and then match your ad copy to the keywords whenever the search volume justifies it.
Here are a few tips to improve ad relevance:-
>>>>> You should make sure that you have a proper structure and hierarchy for the Google Ad campaigns and Ad Groups. It’s extremely difficult to improve ad relevance without a proper structure.
>>>>> Each Ad group should be created around a certain set of keywords.
>>>>> You need to incorporate top keywords in the headline of the ad, body of the ad, display URL, and extensions.
>>>>> You need to regularly revisit your Ad groups and evaluate if keywords need to be moved to the different Ad group.
# Landing Page Experience – A landing page is evaluated on its content, transparency, and trustworthiness, ease navigation, and loading time.
Landing page optimization is one of the most important steps of any online advertising campaigns. The real action happens on the landing page and everything else is only half of the story.
You should take the landing page experience more seriously than everything else and improving landing page helps to improve Google quality score.
A good landing page experience comprises of numerous things such as its navigation, loading speed, device-friendly layout, security, content, and contact details.
Your landing page needs to be relevant to your ads, searcher’s intent, and a call-to-action. Your landing page needs to be an ad extension where your ads offer a brief synopsis.
Google will decide your quality score by looking at your landing page in two ways:
First, it looks at how relevant the page is to the keyword, and Second, it looks at the overall user-friendliness of the page.
Google wants to provide users with the best possible experience and if a landing page isn’t relevant, it won’t have a good quality score. Your landing page will be evaluated first by an automated bot and then by a real human being.
Your landing page should be well designed in addition to good content. It should address the question of the user came to your website.
A poor landing page is one of the top reasons to get a poor quality score. You should make sure that your landing page is relevant to the search term.
An improved landing page experience directly boosts the conversion rate on your website. In other words, you can double your sales without increasing your cost or running any marketing campaign.
The improved landing page experiences can also improve the search engine ranking of your website which leads to free organic traffic.
A good landing page experience also leaves your customers satisfied and increases brand credibility. An improved landing page experience can directly affect your Google quality score.
# Expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) – This grade is based on the keyword’s past performance considering its Ad position.
CTR (click-through-rate) is a fundamental metric in SEM. Google quality score is based on expected CTR. Google is trying to predict the future. It uses an algorithm that is based on intent.
It’s the number of clicks on your ad divided by the number of impressions. It predicts whether your keyword bidding is likely to lead to a click on an ad.
It’s a key indicator of user interest in your ad which is a basis of quality evaluation.
Google AdWords takes into account how well your keyword has performed in the past. Google looks at the history of the keyword to determine the expected CTR.
The best way to improve your overall quality score involves boosting your click-through-rate which defines the number of click on a link to your ad.
It’s the ratio of your ads and the number of people clicked. CTR is a good indicator of relevance and can help to know if you are sending the right message to the right message.
Your CTR is the most important thing to pay attention once you handled the landing page. You should always split test your ads to try and get the highest CTR possible.
Your ads are more likely to be clicked when your ad copy is compelling and relevant. Your ad may have a below-average expected CTR if the ad copy isn’t related to the keyword.
A lack of negative keywords can be a reason for a below-average CTR. Your ad should be triggered only the most relevant keywords.
You need to do the experiment and try different keyword match types to see which one best fits your requirements. It’s a gold mine for creating compelling ad copy.
How to Optimize Google Quality Score –
You’ll be able to see your Google quality score next to each of your keywords. It’s displayed using a scale 1 to 10. If you hit a Google quality score of 7-10, you might need to focus on adding keywords or testing new strategies.
# Relevant and Original Content – Google quality score starts with the content itself. Landing pages should be about the search query which leads to the paid search ad.
You should tailor your content in particular page titles and headings to the visitor’s search queries. Paid search visitors arrive on a landing page with a straightforward goal or with an intention in their mind.
# Keyword Research – Keywords are the foundation of your Google AdWords account. You should choose the best keywords and match with the types of the topic for promotion.
You should look for new long-tail keywords to add to your campaigns instead of focusing on the big, and highly competitive short-tail keywords.
The long-tail keywords are often more relevant than short-tail keywords and are much easier to understand the searcher’s query.
You should discover new, highly relevant keywords to add to your campaigns with long-term opportunities that can contribute to the bulk of overall traffic.
# Keyword Organization – It’s called Adgroups with similar keywords. You need to carefully group keywords which are similar in theme.
You need to split your keywords into tight, organized groups that can be more effectively attached to individual ad campaigns.
# Refine Ad Text – It’s the Ad Relevance. Your ad copy should provide a solution or an answer to the question of the searcher.
You can boost your Google quality score almost overnight by changing your Ad text and testing new relevant and targeted copy to your Ad groups.
You should test out PPC ad copy that is more targeted to your individual ad groups. One of the best ways to improve the quality score is more effective ads get higher CTR.
# Loading Speed – Google also added landing page load time into the quality score algorithm. It would want people to click to search page in the quickest time. Google penalizes slow websites through the quality score.
It’s become more important to have a faster, and lighter website for users with the increasing most website traffic from mobile devices. Google gives you the tools to evaluate page speed and tips to improve load time.
# Add Negative Keywords – You need to continuously research, identify, and exclude irrelevant search terms that are wasting your budget.
e.g. if you are running a campaign for ‘digital marketing course’ and your ads is flashed for ‘free digital marketing course’ and you need to mention the negative keywords.
This move helps significantly increase CTR and indirectly improves your Google quality score. You need to constantly research and excluding irrelevant keywords from your campaigns.
# Small Ad Groups – You need to consider making each Ad group focus on a single product/service for any campaign.
Google recommends 15-20 keywords per ad group. It’s important to have small ad groups because ad relevance affects quality score.
Your ad should be relevant to your keywords. A single ad for multiple different keywords isn’t going to be relevant to all of them.
# Google Optimization – Google recommends using at least three ads in each Ad group with a different approach in order to optimize correctly.
If you set the Ad rotation to optimize, test these ads against each other and use all information to select the best Ad for each search term.
Google has access to much data than we do and can make decisions more effectively. You can improve CTR significantly after introducing optimized rotation.
Conclusion – The high Google quality score indicates a healthy account and pulling in the right traffic and conversions. If your Google quality score is low then there is a disconnect between your message and traffic. You need to track quality score, create the most relevant ads, and craft convenient easy-to-use landing pages adding them to your Google Ads. You’ll achieve the best Ad position and pay less money than your competitors. The bottom line is that a higher average Google quality score leads to better campaign results.