ICOM's Top 5 Ways To Improve Quality Score

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According to Google, 'Quality Score' is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords in a PPC campaign. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user's search query. Quality Score determines if your keyword is eligible to enter the auction and whether your keyword will show or not. Quality Score and 'CPC bid' determine ad rank. (Ad Rank = CPC bid X Quality score). The higher a keyword's Quality Score, the lower the CPC, and so the better the ad position will be.

Improving The Quality Score of Your PPC Campaign

So, now we understand how important Quality Score is to a campaign, what do we do when we notice a drop? In general Google considers a good quality score to be 7/10 or higher.  But before we start pausing or deleting those with a QS of 5 or less, here are ICOM's Top 5 ways to improve Quality Score.

1. Tightly themed Ad Groups – The more targeted and specific your ad groups are, the more relevant each campaign's keywords, ad text and landing page will be to the user's search query, and the higher your CTR will be.

2. Targeted and optimised ad text – Again closely targeted ad text, preferably containing your top performing keywords, will produce better CTR – a key metric in QS. Here at ICOM, we usually try to have 3 ads live in each ad group using different keywords and calls to action, then pausing or optimising those that don’t perform as well as others. It’s also worth remembering that Quality Score is a factor in determining if your ads will show extensions. For sitelinks to help your CTR you need not only a competitive bid (to be in the top 3 positions), but also a good Quality Score.

3. Relevant Landing Pages – Can a user find what they are looking for on my landing page? Google requires a landing page to be relevant, transparent and easy to navigate. Try to ensure your landing page contains your high performing keywords for each ad group – again, this is where it helps to have specific, tightly themed ad groups with specific landing pages.

4. Separate Misspellings – Having a misspelt campaign can be a great way of picking up relatively cheap clicks and possible conversions. However, these will naturally have a lower CTR, so it’s best to have them in their own ad group.

5. Consider pausing keywords with a low CTR (Google recommends lower than 1.5%) that also have a low conversion rate, or no conversions.

If you would like anymore advice on how to improve the Quality Score of your PPC campaign, please contact the ICOM PPC team today. You can call us on 0161 4023170, or email us for more information.