You’ve probably heard the term “Quality Score” thrown around a lot in regards to your paid search, but do you really know what it means? According to Google, Quality Score refers to the “estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages” which is rated on a scale of one to 10 and assigned to each of your keywords. Basically, it’s important because a higher quality score allows you to pay less for bids and have a better position in the search results.
If you’ve never checked your score, you can grade your Google Ads account here by simply inputting your contact info and Google Ads ID and the tool will give you your average quality score across all your keywords. You can also check quality scores for specific keywords in your Google Ads account by following this guide. A Quality Score is determined by three general factors: Click through rate, ad relevance, and landing page performance. To increase your score, you should consider implementing some of the following tactics:
1. Clickthrough Rate
- Add any relevant sales to your ad copy: Are you running a buy one get one free sale next week? Consumers are drawn to ads with special offers, so be sure to include this in your ad to set it apart from the the other ads showing up in the search results.
- Make sure your call to action is compelling: Users viewing your ad need a reason to click. A call to action such as “Buy now” or “Order today” motivate searchers to click on your ad. Check out this cheat sheet for writing call-to-actions complete with character counts.
- Utilize ad extensions: Ad extensions are the added boxes of information about your business, such as locations, phone number and ratings, that can be added to a text ad. These added bits of information will set your ad apart from others in the search results and increase your CTR.
2. Ad Relevance
- Tailor ad copy for each ad group: This may seem like a no-brainer, but the copy in the ads across different ad groups should be changed to match keywords in that ad group. When someone searches your keyword, you want your ad to be directly relevant, so try not to fall into the habit of using the same descriptions across multiple ad groups.
- Use keyword in the headline: Do better than just putting keywords in the description of your ad; make your ad stand out by including keywords in your headline. Putting keywords in the headline ensures that searchers know that your ad is relevant to their query.
3. Landing Page Relevance
- Make sure your site is easy to navigate: When consumers arrive on your homepage, they shouldn’t have to click too many times to find the page they’re looking for. This is where drop-down navigation menus and specific categories come into play.
- Improve load time: The longer a page takes to load, the more likely a user is to abandon that page. So not only will a long load time decrease your quality score, it will also decrease your page views and conversions. Some ways you can improve your load time are simplifying your site design, optimizing images and enabling compression.
- Make sure your landing page is specifically relevant to your keywords: If a consumer were to search “Women’s high heels” they shouldn’t be brought to a general page for all women’s shoes. Even though high heels would likely be found in this category page, the landing page shouldn’t include any products a user isn’t searching for. Make sure your landing pages are as specific to your keywords as possible.
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