At first glance quality score can be quite a daunting concept but it really is quite simple to understand. It’s improving it that is the hard part!

Why do I need a good quality score?

Quite simply it saves you money because you pay less per click when you have a higher quality score and it can affect the position of your ad. The higher your ad the higher the likelihood it will be clicked. Google want to deliver a positive user experience to their customers and using quality score rewards advertisers for delivering that positive experience. The more relevant an ad is to a search term the happier the person searching will be because they have found what they were looking for.

What affects quality score?
  • The expected click through rate (CTR) of the keyword based on its past performance on Google.
  • Your account history i.e. the overall CTR of your ads and keywords.
  • The quality and relevance of your landing page. Is the keyword in the URL, is the page optimised for that keyword, does the keyword appear the title, what about the META descriptions?
  • Your keyword and ad relevance i.e. how relevant is the ad to the keyword? If you selling blue wellies but your ad is describing red flip flops it is not that relevant! Google rewards relevancy.
  • Your keyword search relevance.

When you set up a new AdWords account the quality score of a keyword is initially determined by the keywords performance history on Google.

It is NOT until the keyword has passed the impression threshold (thought to be in the thousands) that the quality score will be affected by the performance of the account. In other words your keyword needs to have been searched for and shown in the search result many times before Google will reward you with higher quality scores.

Very little can be done to influence quality score until you have reached the impression threshold. However I would recommend the following to get the best from your campaign. Don’t forget Google will be using the account performance to calculate your quality scores once it has passed the threshold, not to mention the increased ROI so it is well in your interest to be running the account as efficiently as possible.

  • Optimise the ads with the keyword. At the very least the keyword should be in the ad title
  • Don’t bunch too many keywords in each ad group. The idea is to make the ads as relevant as possible to the search query being carried out
  • Ensure the landing page is relevant and optimised to reflect the keyword you are bidding on

If you are struggling to get to grips with AdWords we can help by ensuring your account is well structured, optimised and following best practises for the ultimate ROI. Then you can relax knowing that this is in hand and concentrate on doing what you do best – running your business!

We continually tweak ads, adjust bids and run reports to ensure that your account is as efficient as possible.

You can read more about quality score on Googles help page by clicking here