PPC Ads and Quality Score by Steve Lionais

Quality Score is yet another secret algorithm used by Google to help determine the quality of your pay-per-click search ad. The quality score influences your cost-per-click (CPC) and where your ad appears in the search results.  If you’re not working to improve your quality score, you’re paying inflated CPC rates for ads that aren’t listed in the top search results.  

Quality score is calculated based on a number of factors.  These are the ones you have the most control over:

• The historical click-through-rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad
• The historical CTR of all ads in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page

To ensure you get the most out of your paid search campaigns, take the time to do it right.  Missteps you take now will cost you more for all your future campaigns. 

What can you do to ensure you’ve got a good quality score?

1. Do you homework – Ensure you’re targeting the most relevant and effective keywords possible by doing extensive research up front.  It may be tedious and time consuming, but it’ll pay off with higher CTR’s.
2. Build landing pages for all of your campaigns – This is a critical component in having a good quality score.  See more on this below.
3. Manage your campaigns – Constant attention needs to be paid to each of your campaigns to ensure they’re performing to the highest potential.  Tweak your ad copy and maximum bid amounts to incrementally improve your CTR.  Most importantly drop campaigns that are not performing well.

• Ensure you create each landing page with original content.  Do not use the same landing page for multiple campaigns, even if it’s for the same product. 
• Ensure your page reflects the customers’ expectations of the ad.  If your advertising chocolate bars for sale, ensure that is the main focus of your landing page.
• Ensure you provide links to ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact’ pages where the visitor can find information about your company and contact you if necessary.
• Provide a link to your privacy policy
• Ensure your landing page loads quickly

Not sure how your website is performing? We can help you with that.  We provide expert advice on how to measure the performance of your website using google analytics.