If you’re new to Google Ads, you might have heard the term Quality Score thrown around a lot. It seems important, but you can’t figure out what it is or why it matters. Well, we’re here to tell you that the Quality Score is at the core of campaigns. Read ahead to find out exactly why!
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What Is the Google Ads Quality Score?
The Quality Score is a scale of measurement Google Ads uses to rate the quality and relevance of your advertisement. The scale starts at 1 and goes all the way to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.
It’s a way for Google Ads to tell advertisers and brands how well their ad is expected to perform. In essence, it’s a way for the advertisers to analyze their campaign and work to improve it until Google Ads deems it good enough.
Quality Score is used to calculate your CPC and Ad Rank. Multiplying the Quality Score with your maximum bid will give you your Ad Rank, which is a critical factor in winning auctions.
Why Is It Important?
If you’re an advertiser, you must know that the Google Ads auction is different from others. The advertiser with the highest bid won’t necessarily win. Money is just one of the factors. The other is Quality Score.
If you have a high Quality Score, you won’t have to bid as much to compete with some of the bigger advertisers. In essence, the Quality Score is your ticket to winning Google Ads auctions without going over budget.
The Quality Score will affect your cost-per-click (CPC) as well. Better quality ads perform well. But your maximum bid was low, so you’re not paying as much either. This is an overall good result for an ad campaign.
By reducing the advertising cost, Quality Score endures that both big and small advertisers compete on a level playing field.
Factors That Affect the Quality Score
There are three main factors that affect the Quality Score you get for a specific ad. These are:
Expected Click-Through Rate
The expected CTR is the likelihood that a user will click on your ad in the SERPs. It’s closely related to the keyword you’re targeting. When Google Ads gives you your ad’s expected CTR, it’s basically telling you how well your ad matches with the associated keyword.
This factor takes into account the past performance of the keyword based on the ad position. This means whether the specific keyword has performed well in the past at a specific ad position. If it has, Google Ads expects it to do the same again. And thus more clicks on your ad.
If you get a Below Average in expected CTR, this means that your ad copy or text doesn’t match well with your target keyword. You should adjust your text to improve on this factor.
Landing Page Experience
This is the post-click experience of the user and is highly dependent on the page that your ad takes them to. Google lists three qualities that impact the landing page experience; clear, useful and relevant.
Being clear relates to the design of your landing page. It should be easy to navigate through. You have to keep your conversion ratio at 1:1. Your webpage copy needs to be minimal so that visitors can easily skim through it.
Useful pertains to the content that you put on your landing page. It must provide value to visitors. This means that your content must convince visitors of your offering. You also have to make it readable. An infographic is a good example of a useful piece of content.
Lastly, your landing page needs to be relevant to your ad and its target keyword. Clicking on your ad must take them to a specific landing page. And not to your homepage or any other product page. You can also personalize your landing pages according to audience demographics, such as location.
Ad Relevance
Just like expected CTR, ad relevance is also related to your target keyword. This factor shows how accurately your ad matches the user’s search intent. The question it answers is: “Does your ad copy relate to the keywords in your ad group?”
You might have two or more keywords that relate to your business, such as “social media marketing” and “email marketing.” But that doesn’t mean you can use both keywords in the same ad group. This will decrease the relevance of your ads.
Each ad must target a specific keyword. For multiple keywords, you must create multiple ad campaigns. This ensures that your ad campaigns are relevant to the keywords you’re targeting.
How to Check Your Quality Score?
It’s important to keep a close eye on your Quality Score. You can simply add it to your dashboard on Google Ads. This way, it will always be in front of you. But how do you do this? Here are the simple steps to do so:
- Open your Google Ads account.
- In the left-side menu, find Keywords. Click on it.
- Click on the three bars icon in the upper-left corner of the table.
- Press on Modify columns for keywords.
- Under the Quality Score heading you’ll see an option for Quality Score. Click on the check box next to it.
- A column for Quality Score will be added to your keywords table.
You can also add columns for each factor affecting the Quality Score. Follow the same steps and check the boxes next to Landing Page Exp., Exp. CTR, and Ad Relevance. You can also view past scores and these factors for each of your keywords. For this, you’ll have to check the boxes with “(hist.)” next to them.
Improve Quality Score for Better Ad Performance
Quality Score is one of the most important factors in determining the performance of your ad campaigns. The other is your advertising budget. Together, these two factors create Ad Rank, which determines where your ad will appear on SERPs. So it’s critical to improve this score. You’ll rank better on SERPs and get more clicks and conversions. And you won’t have to invest as much money to compete with your competitors.
How have you improved your Google Ads Quality Score? Let us know in the comments below!
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