Understanding Google Quality Scores

Google’s Quality Score (QS) system is one of the most crucial factors to understand if you want to profit from AdWords Pay-Per-Click (PPC). It can also be one of the most confusing systems, in part because Google doesn’t give many straight answers as to what they are looking for. However, marketers have begun to piece together a much more complete picture on what quality score is and how to achieve good scores. You will now learn why QS scores are so important, as well as how to improve your scores.

Why Quality Scores are Crucial to a Good PPC Campaign

There are many reasons why a good quality score is crucial to a profitable PPC campaign. These are the most important reasons:

* Raw Traffic – Google doesn’t just show all their ads at once. Instead, Google rotates through all the ads they have in their system. That is why sometimes when you enter your own keyword, you won’t see your ad. The higher your quality score, the more often Google is going to rotate your ads. Extremely high QS advertisers may even have their ad rotated in on every single search. Conversely, if you have a very low quality score, you might not even get any traffic at all. Google will just stop sending you traffic.

* Cost Per Click (CPC) – The difference between a high QS’s CPC and a low QS’s CPC can be astronomical. Someone with a 5 or less QS might have to pay $1.50 for a click, while someone with an 8 to 10 QS might pay $0.10 for that very same click. It’s much more likely that you will build a profitable campaign when you have a high quality score than when you have a low-scoring one.

* Rankings – In addition to actual costs, higher QS advertisers also rank higher. If you have a QS of 7 and you are paying $0.25 per click, the advertiser with a QS of 10 can be paying only $0.10 and still be showing up ahead of you. In short, with a higher quality score you get more traffic and cheaper traffic.

Now that we’ve covered why QS is so crucial, what can you do to improve your quality scores?

Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Landing Page Quality

The two biggest factors that Google looks at are your CTRs and your landing page. Your CTRs are crucial because they are what determine how much money Google makes. The higher your CTR, the more money Google makes per view they give you, because more clicks means more money paid to Google. Therefore Google will naturally rank higher ads that make them more money. Also, a high CTR ad tells Google that what you are advertising is probably what the visitor is looking for. Your landing page is another crucial factor for determining your quality score. Google looks for websites with high content. One-page affiliate sites and squeeze pages with no links to content tend to get lower quality scores.

The Relevancy Triangle

In addition to CTRs and landing pages, Google also looks at how relevant your keywords are to three things: your keyword bids, your ads and your landing pages.

If your keyword bids, the ads and the landing page match closely to what the user enters, you are more likely to get a high quality score.

It’s important to realize the quality and relevance are both important. You could have a very high quality website with a lot of information about candles, but if you are bidding on fishing keywords, you are still going to get a low score. In order to get a high quality score, you need to have high relevance as well as high quality and CTR.

These are the three most important factors Google looks at when determining your quality score, which is one of the most important factors to success in Google AdWords. Learn the system thoroughly and it will definitely pay off.

Share

Author: jm

Joan Mullally has been doing business online for more than 20 years and is a pioneer in the fields of online publishing, marketing, and ecommerce. She is the author of more than 200 guides and courses designed to help beginner and intermediate marketers make the most of the opportunities the Internet offers for running a successful business. A student and later teacher trainee of Frank McCourt’s, she has always appreciated the power of the word, and has used her knowledge for successful SEO and PPC campaigns, and powerful marketing copy. One computer science class at NYU was enough to spark her fascination with all things digital. In her spare time, she works with adult literacy, animal fostering and rescue, and teaching computer skills to women.