If you’ve spent anytime with PPC campaigns for your business, I’m sure you’ve heard the term Google Ads Quality Score. You might only be vaguely aware of what this is though and I want to change that. Google Ads Quality Score is an important metric for your PPC campaigns and in the below guide I explain what it is, why its beneficial, and how you can improve yours.
Google Ads Quality Score – What is it and why is it Important?
Sometimes Google can be frustrating and leave important metrics unknown which means we have to guess and use trial and error to see what works. It generally doesn’t do this for its PPC platform and one of the most useful metrics it has is Google Ads Quality Score.
What is Google Ads Quality Score?
Google Ads Quality score is a tool/metric provided by Google that measures the relevance and performance of your ads. Simply put, you want to aim for a higher Google Ads Quality Score. There are three core factors that affect quality score:
- Expected click-through rate.
- Ad relevance.
- Landing page experience.
So, the best ads with a high quality score have a higher click-through rate due to the relevance of their ads in relation to keywords, and their customers can enjoy a smooth and engaging landing page experience. The three components are given a score of above average, average, or below, and combined together to give you an overall score.
You can check your Google Ads Quality Score by entering your Campaigns section in Google Ads, clicking on “Audiences, keywords and content”, and then clicking “Search keywords”. From there, look for the “Modify columns for keywords” and open the quality score section.
What Benefits Does a High Quality Score Give?
So why care about your Google Ads Quality Score? In short, it can result in the following:
- Higher position for your PPC ads.
- Low cost per action for your PPC campaigns.
- Improved PPC efficiency and results.
Essentially, Google looks more favourably on your ads, deems them more relevant, and thus will give them a higher position, and you ultimately get a lower CPA and improved CTR/end results.
I don’t recommend using quality score as THE defining metric that you build your ad campaigns around though – use it as a guideline and an additional metric to make sure your ads are on track.
6 Ways to Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score
By understanding the three core components that Google considers for Quality Score (CTR, relevance, and landing page experience), we can easily make improvements. Using those three factors, I’ve created six relevant ways to improve your Google Ads Quality Score below.
1. Make Sure Your Ads are Relevant to The Targeted Keywords
Ad relevance is one of the core factors that Google uses to rate your quality score. This relates to how closely your ad content matches the target keyword. To gain a score of above average, you must display a high degree of relevance.
This starts with thinking about your customer’s thought process when searching for a keyword. What do they specifically want to find or get from that search? You can then tailor your ad content to suit and make sure it matches search intent.
At the very basic, your ad content must match the keyword – I see far too many PPC ads where the content goes off on a tangent and references things that have nothing to do with what the user wants. This ultimately reduces your quality score but you’ll find that you have a low CTR too and it could impact your local SEO as people will find your ads confusing.
2. Optimise Your Landing Page, its Relevance, and Quality
You could have the best ad copy in the world and highly relevant keywords, but if your landing page sucks, your quality score and CTR will ultimately fail.
Give as much attention to your landing page as you do your ad campaigns. Some essential tips for creating high-quality landing pages include:
- Make sure the landing page content is relevant to your ad and keyword.
- Improve page speeds to give a smooth user experience.
- Ensure the landing page is optimised for mobile browsers.
- Include clear CTAs so the customers know what to do.
- Include social proof such as reviews and testimonials to add weight to your content.
- Use a consistent design that matches your branding.
It’s also important to create individual landing pages for your different ad campaigns – don’t simply try and direct multiple ads to one page as you can lose much of the relevance and can’t optimise the landing page as effectively for each specific keyword.
3. Keep Your Ad Groupings and Campaign Structure Organised
An area I often see people overlook is their underlying ad groupings and structure but this can have an impact on quality score. Some things to remember include:
- Organise your campaigns using a granular structure.
- Use multiple ad groups if necessary – the more the better.
- Only use similar/closely related keywords within individual ad groups.
Essentially, you want to split your ad campaigns into logical groups, and those groups should be as specific as possible. By doing this, you can keep your target keywords relevant to your ads which is one of the main factors for Google Ads Quality Score.
If you use a more diluted and broad approach where multiple different keywords and campaigns are grouped together, you can unwittingly decrease the relevance of your ads and negatively impact your quality score.
4. Create Engaging Ad Copy That Will Drive CTR
If your ad copy is bland and generic, people simply won’t click. This is not only a vital factor to boost Google Ads Quality Score, but it is also imperative for CTR, and the success of your campaigns. Some simple tips to improve your ad copy include:
- Make sure its grammatically correct! Noone wants to read a sloppy ad with typos.
- Be emotive and incorporate human language into your copy to make it more relatable.
- Keep the ad copy relevant to the landing page, subject, and target keyword.
- Include at least one clear CTA.
- Try testing different CTA see what works the best.
- Add a sense of urgency where appropriate.
- Make sure your ad copy is always factually correct – never falsify information.
This can take time to perfect, but it’s something you can easily work on to improve. You can also do A/B testing and run multiple iterations of your ads to see which copy performs the best and then refine that further.
5. Utilise Google Ad Extensions
Google Ad Extension don’t directly impact Quality Score but they have been shown to have a positive impact on CTR thus indirectly improving Quality Score. Ad Extensions extend the functionality and utility of your ads and can provide users with additional important information. Google Ad Extensions include:
- Sitelinks
- Callouts
- Structured Snippets
- Promotion
- Call
- Lead Form
- Location
- App
- Image
- Affiliate Location
Sitelinks, callouts, and structure snippets can be used by most businesses and I recommend trying to incorporate these into your ads. For example, structured snippets allow you to highlight important info of features of your business that customers may benefit from.
The other extensions are situational and will depend on your type of business and what your ad is promoting. Still, checkout this article from Google about the ad extensions to gain a better idea of what each one does and how you could use it.
6. Improve Your Page Speeds
Landing pages with slow loading times can negatively impact user experience and thus reduce click-through rates, ultimately damaging your Google Ads Quality Score. In contrast, a landing page with lightning fast loading speeds allows the user to do what they want and get the info they need in a flash, thus making for a much more enjoyable experience.
I recommend using Google PageSpeed Insights to test the page speeds of your PPC landing pages, and your website in general. This tool gives your pages an overall performance score and ratings out of 100 for accessibility, best practices, and SEO.
It also offers a list of diagnostics and recommendations of where you can improve your page speeds. This can help you eliminate a range of simple issues and drastically improve loading times.
Don’t Let Your Google Ads Quality Score Drag Down Your PPC Campaigns
I can’t understate the importance of Google Ads Quality Score enough – it is a vital metric that you must consider if you want to boost the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.
As you can see from the above, Google has made it relatively easy to manage Quality Score by stating the three key factors that effect it – click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. You should always bear these three factors in mind when improving your ads and working to boost your quality score.
Keyword to ad relevance, page speeds, using ad extension, landing page optimisation, and compelling ad copy are all things that will have a positive impact. If you feel like this is too much to work with, or you need direction with your PPC marketing, contact us and we will use your years of experience to help!
