If you run pay-per-click search ads in Google Ads, you know that it can often be a tricky nut to crack. Especially when it comes to the inexplicable quality score.
The Ads quality score is made up of layers that influence the performance of your adverts. But what is it? How is it calculated? And why does it matter? (Tip: It does).
Fear not! This article will teach you not only how to enhance your quality ratings, but also how to create a highly high performing structure for your Ads.
Ads quality score: what is it?
Let’s keep things simple: Google assigns a quality score to your Ads advertising and keywords. This number determines your ad’s position in the search results and your cost per click.
Consider it a credit score. Your credit score impacts the size of your loan and the interest rate you pay when you purchase a home or automobile. Similar to Ads quality score.
The more your advertising fit a searcher’s demands, the better your quality score and the less you spend per click. You’ll have to pay Google a lot more to see advertisements that aren’t directly tied to a search query.
Optimizing your quality scores can help you enhance your ROI (yay!) A better-quality score reduces your cost per lead or sale by 16 to 80%.
WordStream shows clearly how quality scores impact how much you pay per ad click, how your ad rank is determined, and where your ad appears on the search results page:
Error “rarely presented owing to poor quality score” So, what?
If you receive this warning on your Ads account’s Keywords tab, you should read this page. This inaccuracy indicates a quality score of two out of ten or less—definitely room for improvement.
Ads associated with low quality score keywords will either not be shown or will be shown at a much higher cost if clicked.
Ad Rank is affected by Quality Score. When this notice shows, Google is simply telling you that your ad isn’t relevant to searchers, which equals less clicks and less income for Google.
So, are you ready to boost your Ads quality scores? Let’s begin…
Improve Quality Score Step 1: SMAGs
Google advises 15-20 keywords per ad group. But this hardly works. In fact, one keyword per ad group is optimum. Even if you have a huge account, use this method for 80% of the most trafficked terms. It’s also good for keywords with the “rarely presented due to poor quality score” warning.
To earn a strong overall quality score, your keyword, ad, and landing page must all work together. Your ad may not be completely appropriate for every term in your ad group, and your landing page may not include all of those keywords. If your ad group just contains one keyword, it is simple to tailor your ad content and landing page to include enough references to that term. More control over your quality scores.
Add all three match kinds (exact, phrase, modified broad) to a single keyword ad group.
For example, if you offer automobile coverings, you could want to develop something like this:
Ad Group Car Covers:
[Car Covers]
“Car Covers”
+Car +Covers
Ad Group Custom Car Covers:
[Custom Car Covers]
“Custom Car Covers”
+Custom +Car +Covers
Ad Group Corvette Car Covers:
[Corvette Car Covers]
“Corvette Car Covers”
+Corvette +Car +Covers
Ad Group Chevrolet Corvette Car Covers:
[Chevrolet Corvette Car Covers]
“Chevrolet Corvette Car Covers”
+Chevrolet +Corvette +Car +Covers
This reduces the user search term to keyword and keyword to ad ratios. Ad targeting is more relevant and exact when user search phrases directly match the keyword (provided you utilize the keyword in your ad text), increasing CTR and quality scores.
This method should be used for keywords that account for at least 80% of your traffic. And if that’s still too many, do it for all keywords scoring three or less.
Using single keyword ad groups also allows you to use a landing page particularly designed for that term. This increases quality ratings and gives consumers a more relevant and focused experience. This will be covered in full in step six.
Step 2: Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are keywords that you add to your campaign or ad group that you don’t want Google to see. They help you avoid unnecessary searches from your campaign and guarantee that each term is only used in one ad group.
Add non-targeted keywords to the campaign level. For our car cover example, you could wish to include the following negative keywords (assuming you don’t sell these covers!):
seat
free
tire
steering
dashboard
However, when employing single keyword ad groups as stated in the first phase, it is vital to include ad group level negative keywords. In this instance, using ad group level negative keywords is the only method to avoid keyword overlap.
Ad groups for keywords like “Custom Car Covers” and “Corvette Car Covers” will start to take traffic from other ad groups. You may fix this by using negative keywords like:
Ad Group Car Covers:
Custom
Corvette
Chevrolet
Ad Group Custom Car Covers:
Corvette
Chevrolet
Ad Group Corvette Car Covers:
Chevrolet
Negative keywords prevent your short-tail keywords from overshadowing your long-tail keywords. Finding a Chevrolet Corvette Car Cover is significantly easier if the ad expressly specifies Chevrolet Corvette.
Step 3: Text Ads
Ads must be relevant to user search queries to boost quality ratings. It’s simpler to achieve this with a single term ad group since you can always check the ad wording.
To take your advertisements to the next level, employ Google’s new extended text ad style, which allows for 50% longer ads than previously. This allows you to include long-tail keywords and yet offer advantages and a call-to-action. Your advertising will now be more relevant and have higher CTRs.
Expanded text advertising provide you 140 characters, compared to the old 25-35-35 format:
Here’s a brief way to setting up your extended text ad:
- Headline 1 – Fill in the blanks with your keyword.
- Headline 2 – Describe your key advantage or USP here.
- Display URL — In the URL route, include your term. If your keyword is lengthy, you may split it up and utilize both path fields for it. Otherwise, use one field for the keyword and the other for a CTA.
- Description – Include any extra advantages or features here. Include a call to action. You may also enter your term or partial keyword here as an alternative.
For instance, an ad for our “Chevrolet Corvette Car Covers” ad group may look like this:
If you create an ad for a keyword that contains a competitor name or a trademarked phrase, you may not include that keyword in the headlines or the description. However, Google allows you to utilize such a term in the display URL, which you should take advantage of. This is the only method to include a rival or trademarked phrase in your ad content while still keeping Google happy!
Step 4: Stop Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is an Ads feature that enables you to automatically utilize the user’s search term anywhere in your ad content. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a magic bullet for improving quality scores. Using single keyword ad groups eliminates the need for Dynamic Keyword Insertion.
The fact is that Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) might produce unexpected effects, thus it’s in your best interest to forsake it. For starters, if you use keywords carelessly (especially broad match keywords), you may end up with irrelevant ads. Your ads will now show misspellings if the user query contains one. A user inquiry including a trademarked or copyrighted phrase may be problematic.
A keyword crammed into a headline isn’t nearly as effective as a well-written, passionate title. More room to make them laugh, weep, empathize—whatever makes them click on your ad.
So, forget about DKI. Revert to your copywriting origins and create a buzz.
Step 5: Ad Extensions
Ad extensions play a significant role in the determination of quality score calculations. They provide additional aspects of information about your company that allow searchers to locate what they’re seeking for more quickly, without having to dig through your website for answers. Your click-through rates will rise as a result of this extra degree of convenience. As Google puts it, “Give your clients additional reasons to click” on your website.
Listed below is a brief description of the ad extensions that will be most beneficial in terms of increasing quality scores:
- Sitelinks: Instead of using website pages, it is preferable to leverage other landing pages that you already have. Example: extra items or services that you provide, downloadable content offerings, webinars, special promotions, and so on. Consider paying particular attention to the titles that you display for these links; strive to include your most popular search phrases into these titles. Use the extra 2-line descriptions that are offered for each sitelink to the fullest extent possible.
- Location: These extensions allow you to show your address immediately under your advertisement. This form of ad extension is very useful for campaigns that are targeted at certain locations.
- Call: By including your phone number in your advertisement, visitors will be able to contact you immediately from the search results page. They may simply press the Call button on their mobile devices to initiate the call.
- Review: When someone from a third-party site provides a positive review, you may incorporate that review underneath your ad by using a review extension in your ad code.
- Callout: Callout extensions enable you to include an additional line of material that promotes the advantages or characteristics of your organization. Although this sentence is not clickable, it may serve to urge visitors to engage with your advertisement.
- Structured snippet: Structured snippets enable you to add further information about your goods or services based on a specified list of categories. • Keyword snippet: Keyword snippets allow you to add additional information about your products or services based on a keyword phrase. For example, you might choose “Services” from the drop-down menu and provide a structured excerpt about the many services you provide.
- Price: These sorts of extensions enable you to display the costs of your items or services to potential customers. Even though price extensions are only displayed on mobile devices, they may be really useful—particularly if you’re providing discounted or promotional pricing.
- Seller Ratings: In the event that you own an ecommerce site or are a store and have independent ratings accessible from a reliable third-party source, you may integrate their feed into your website. As a result of doing so, star ratings will display inside your ad language, which serves as a fantastic visual indication that people are likely to notice.
An advertisement displaying seller ratings, a callout, structured snippets (types) and sitelinks ad extensions is shown.
An advertisement displaying a call, a callout, a review, and sitelinks (with 2-line descriptions) Extensions for advertisement
The seller ratings, call, structured snippets (types), and price ad extensions are all shown in this mobile ad.
Ad extensions may be applied at the account, campaign, or ad group level, depending on the situation:
- Location, call, and ratings and review extensions: In most cases, these extensions should be added at the account level unless you have many locations or phone numbers in which case, they should be added to the campaigns that are linked with the location or phone number.
- Sitelinks, callouts, and snippets: These components should be included at the campaign level (and in some circumstances at the ad group level) as well as at the ad group level (in certain situations). While you do not absolutely require individual extensions for each ad group, you may give extensions for groups of ad groups that are similar to one another.
Step 6: The Content of the Landing Page
A relevant landing page is one of the variables that Google considers when evaluating your quality score, and this is one of the factors that Google takes into account. Always make sure to include your keywords in the title, meta description, and meta keywords sections of your landing page to ensure that it is found. Moreover, include keywords throughout your text, paying special attention to the headlines and subheadings. Essentially, you must use many of the same on-page SEO tactics that you would do for optimizing the individual pages of your website.
Use a customized landing page for each of your ad groups if you’re using the single keyword ad group technique that we covered previously in this article. Using this method, you can complete the trifecta of ensuring that your keyword, ad, and landing page all convey the same identical message. This will not only improve your quality score, but it will also have a significant positive impact on your conversion rate as well.
However, generating a unique landing page for each of your ad groups is not a reasonable expectation. Not only is it resource costly to begin with, but it is also a pain to maintain and do A/B testing on. Using dynamic text substitution, you can get around this difficulty completely. When you use this strategy, you’ll just need to develop a small number of landing pages, or maybe even just one landing page.
As a general rule, the landing page URL of an advertisement should include your keyword and, in certain cases, the whole of your headline. When you click on your ad URL, the landing page will employ dynamic text replacement in a few crucial areas such as the headline and call to action, and it will replace your current content with the keywords and headline that you entered into your advertisement URL.
In this example, the terms “Chevrolet Car Cover” and “Chevrolet Corvette Car Covers” are dynamically inserted.
This removes the need to manually develop many landing pages, which may be a time-consuming and exhausting procedure.
By using this strategy, you will be able to ensure that each user’s experience is very relevant to the search they are doing. A great technique to improve your quality score and conversion rates in no time at all!
Step 7: User Experience on the Landing Page
You should devote some effort to ensuring that your landing pages are quick to load, aesthetically attractive, and provide a positive overall user experience for your visitors to your website. After investing so much time and effort in developing your advertising campaign and content, it would be such a disappointment if your consumers abandoned their shopping carts as soon as they saw your uninspired landing page. Not only do you lose a conversion, but these fast “bounces” can have a negative impact on your quality score. Yikes.
The Google PageSpeed tool for User Experience is seen in this screenshot.
While the design and user experience of your landing page have already been addressed in great length elsewhere, there are a few more factors that influence how a user perceives your landing page:
- A landing page should have the same offer that was offered in your advertisement.
- Your company’s information should be clearly shown in order to build confidence.
- Your landing page should be responsive and readily browsable from both desktop and mobile devices.
Even more crucially, your site must load quickly. A search result that took an eternity to load may have annoyed you. Approximately how long did you stay on the page before clicking the back button and moving on to another search?
The patience and attention spans of searchers are both dwindling. Speedy loading speeds are critical for a positive user experience, and as a result, a high-quality score is also dependent on them.
Step 8: Branded Keywords
No matter how high your own branded keywords rank naturally, you should still employ them in your bids. Your combined CTR will be greater if both PPC and organic results are shown for your branded keyword if just organic results are shown. Furthermore, branded advertisements will have the greatest click-through rates (CTRs) throughout your whole campaign, which is another indicator that helps to raise your keyword’s quality score.
Check these fantastic CTRs and Quality Scores for branded phrases
The quality score for trademarked phrases is usually between seven and ten. Why? There are a number of variables at play. Creating relevant advertising and landing pages for these sorts of keywords is significantly simpler since your brand is clearly reflected across the full content of your site. For this reason. Second, people who use your brand keyword in a Google search are likely to be serious about buying your product or service already. If they click on your ad and convert, you will see an increase in your total quality score.
Your branded advertisements may also be compared to billboards. Yes, you were destined to appear in organic search results. However, the marketing message in your banner ad at the top of the website is very clear to the reader. As an additional bonus to your prospects, you can utilize ad extensions to provide them information about new items or special offers.
These commercials reaffirm your importance to the client. This is particularly critical in light of the fact that your rivals are likely to bid on your brand’s keyword and appear in ad results. If you miss this moment, your competitors’ ad may intrigue prospects and push them away from you.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve got a clear plan, it’s time to put it into action. And if you do all we’ve outlined; your campaign’s results will rocket to heights you haven’t seen before.