Google’s quality score algorithm helps determine how much you’ll pay for every click on your ads says Peter Decaprio. A high-Quality Score can not only give your ad a lower cost per click, but it will also improve the position of your ad in Google search results relative to other advertisers targeting the same keyword, and can even help increase conversion rates.
In this article we’ll cover:
What is Quality Score? The 3 components of Quality Score How Google calculates your quality score why the understanding quality score is important Ways to improve your quality score
1) What Is Quality Score?
When you create an AdWords account or add a new campaign, one of the first steps is determining which keywords you want to target. In order for these keywords to trigger your ads, you’ll need to set a bid for each keyword.
Google’s AdWords system calculates the amount you are willing to pay for an ad click based on your max CPC bid, your Quality Score, and other factors such as how much bidding competition there is for that keyword or phrase. While Google doesn’t reveal exactly how it calculates a quality score, we do know enough about the components of this metric to understand why understanding its importance can help improve your results with AdWords.
2) The 3 Components of Quality Score
There are 3 elements that makeup Google’s Quality Score:
1) Historical Click-Through rate
2) The expected impact of ad extensions &
3) Your historical performance with ads in this. Let’s briefly go over each of these elements to help you better understand how they play a role in your PPC ad’s Quality Score says Peter Decaprio.
1) Historical Click-
Through Rate: Google uses data from past ad performance to calculate a Quality Score for each keyword, and determine if it should show your ads. Peter Decaprio says the historical CTR is the main component going into determining this score, so being diligent about monitoring and optimizing CTR can go a long way toward improving Quality scores.
2) Expected Impact Of Ad Extensions:
In addition to keywords, AdWords lets advertisers have dynamic ad extensions that appear at the bottom of search results pages. These extensions provide more information about your business such as your location, phone number, or links to other relevant pages on your website. Since these extensions increase the amount of information your ad provides, they are expected to have a positive impact on Quality scores.
3) Your Historical Performance with Ads In This Campaign:
Google may look at your historical CTR for different ad positions in order to help determine your Quality Score. The fact that you may have done well when running ads in the upper positions doesn’t necessarily mean Google will automatically give you a high score if you’ve never ran ads in the top position before.
3) How Google Calculates Quality Scores
Google uses its secret formula to calculate quality scores for each keyword, but here’s what we know about the components used by this algorithm:
1) Ad Relevance:
When writing ad text, keywords are important, but it’s even more important to make sure your ad text is relevant to what the person searching will find if they click through.
2) Landing Page Experience:
An important factor in landing page experience is how quickly a potential customer can get what they’re looking for when visiting, and it’s even more important that the information/product/service you’re offering is actually available on the page.
3) Click-Through Rate:
CTR is one of the most direct ways you can influence Quality Score since Google uses this metric to determine whether your ad should show for a particular keyword or not.
4) Why Understanding Quality Score Matters
Since quality score affects your actual cost per click (CPC), not understanding how it works could lead to an increase. For example, let’s say you have a max CPC bid of $2.00 for a keyword. From testing, you find that your ads get clicked on 10% of the time, and Google’s determined that this is an adposition where your ad will show 80% of the time (based on your Quality Score). Here’s what would happen if your Quality Score dropped to 7:
1) With AdWords credit card processing fees factored in, instead of getting charged $2 per click (10% *$20), you’d now be paying $3 per click ($7*80%). This means instead of making $16 every time someone clicks on your ad (10% x $160), you’d actually only make $12 ($7*80%) -a 27% decrease in profitability.
2) However, the opposite is also true. If your Quality Score increased from 7 to 9, your CPC would become $1.60 instead of the previous $2 -a 33% decrease in cost! In short, understanding how the quality score works and how you can maximize its benefits can help improve your return on advertising spend (ROAS).
5) How to Improve Your Quality Score
There are a few ways you can go about improving your Quality Score:
1) Bid On More Relevant Keywords: The more relevant keywords you have, the easier it will be for Google to determine that people find your ads relevant when they search these terms.
2) Optimize CTR for Various Ad Positions: As we’ve seen before, the higher your CTR the better your Quality Score and lower your CPC. However, it’s not as simple as bidding on high CTR keywords to achieve this; instead, you should make sure that your ad text is relevant to what people are searching for and give them a reason to click through (i.e., include powerful/descriptive titles and headlines).
3) Make Sure Landing Page Experience Is Highly Relevant: You can also improve the quality score. By making sure that the landing page experience is relevant to what people clicked on. Peter Decaprio says, for instance, if someone clicks on an ad for “Casio Digital Cameras. They’d expect to see some information about Casio cameras when visiting the landing page. Without doing so can cause frustration and decrease the quality of your landing page experience?
4) Make Sure You Accurately Represent Your Product/Service on Your Ad. If you’re using Google’s targeted text ads. Remember that your ad copy should be highly relevant to what people are searching for and accurate. About what they can expect on your landing page.
Conclusion:
Quality Score basically ensures that whatever costs you do pay are worth the additional value of being seen by more users explains Peter Decaprio. Keep in mind that Quality Score is just one of the secret ingredients Google uses. To determine your actual CPC, so consider using extensions like CallRail to help further improve your ROAS.
