Feb 11 2011
AdWords Quality Score – Why Should You Hire a Pro?
A Google AdWords account that is improperly set up and managed usually means that you’re paying more for clicks than you should (cost per click or CPC for short), appearing in a lower ad position compared to your competitors and – perhaps most importantly – wasting resources that could be better devoted to other areas of marketing your business.
Why is Google AdWords Quality Score Important?
To an extent AdWords ads are run similar to an auction format – keywords or phrases are bid on and ranked according to a maximum CPC (or one of several similar available pricing formats) that an advertiser is willing to pay for each click. However, quality score is the differentiating factor in this equation and keeps the system fair for advertiser and Google user alike. The scale is between one and ten, with ten being the highest achievable score. Traditional forerunners to Google’s quality score system involved search engines ranking based on a ‘biggest bid wins the top spot’ methodology.
The quality score model means the Google user is satisfied by finding relevant results to their search query; the advertiser can achieve cost effective ad spend based on relevance (ideally without getting into a price war with their competitors) and Google can maximise ad revenue (!) and continue providing new features.
What Determines Quality Score?
Quality score involves several factors and is closely related to ad performance i.e. how relevant your ad is to a user and how many clicks it receives as a result.
The more straightforward aspects involved in calculating quality score include:
- The quality of your landing page
- The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
- The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query (and thus CTR)
By working with search marketing professionals, you can increase the relevance of your landing page or we can help you to choose search terms better suited to your business needs. First Rate Internet Marketing Consultants are all Individually Qualified in AdWords and First Rate is a Google AdWords Certified Partner.
The remaining factors are somewhat more complex and include:
- The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
- Your account history including the CTR of all ads and keywords in your account
- The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group and your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown.
Expert advice is invaluable in these areas to ensure you are achieving effective click through rates from the very beginning of each campaign. This can be done in several ways including the use of negative keywords and geographical targeting tailored to the needs of your business. Ad groups also need to be tightly targeted by theme.
What if the Quality Score is 10 for all Keywords?
Of course, there are situations in competitive industries where multiple advertisers have achieved the maximum quality score of 10 for a given keyword and a bidding war can’t be avoided.
In these situations Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) experiments play an important role to maintain cost efficiency. CRO implementation is one of our key areas of expertise at First Rate and we will red flag PPC situations for you as they arise to ensure additional performance is squeezed out of the landing page.
