The Different Google Ads Quality Scores
There are a number of Quality Scores that you can see within your Google Ads account. Knowing a little about all of them will help you to get the most of this all-important part of your business marketing plans.
Account Level Quality Score
If you take a look at this particular Quality Score then you will see how all the Keywords and Ads have performed within your account. The type of thing that will affect this particular Quality Score is whether or not you have a lot of low Quality Score keywords as well as whether or not you have a low click through rate. You will also see a low Quality Score if you are a new account and you haven’t had the time to get your Keywords and Ads performing as well as they can.
Ad Group Quality Score
A great way to make sure that your campaign is going the way that you want is to take a look at your Ad Group level Quality Score. As the name suggests, this particular score will take a look at the groups of ads that you have put together. Being able to take a look at the areas where you have a low Quality Score, will definitely help you to achieve as good a ROI as possible for your efforts. You can restructure your ad groups, you can look at ads that have a low click through rate and you can also move things around to make sure that your Quality Score is as protected as possible.
Keyword Level Quality Score
Keywords are incredibly important when it comes to making sure that your website performs as well as you want it to. Therefore, being able to look at the Quality Score of your keywords, within your AdWords interface is vital. The keywords are scored on a scale of 1-10, (1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest). This score is calculated by looking at the amount of score queries that match your keyword.
When you look at the Keyword Quality Score within Ads, you are going to be able to see a number of things. This includes:
- Quality Score
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
- Expected CTR
- Historic Quality Score
- Historic Ad Relevance
- Historic Landing Page Experience
- Historic Expected CTR
Each of which can give you some more information about the impressions of each keyword and how it is performing for your website.
Ad Level Quality Score
Every single Ad that you have running within your ad groups will have a click through rate (CTR) and this CTR will have an impact on your Quality Score. The good news is that you can improve the CTR on your ads, which will boost your Quality Score. The simplest way to do this is to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion or DKI within your ads. Ads that have DKIs within them will show the exact query that the user entered, as long as it doesn’t exceed the character limits of the ad. They are much more likely to have a click through than those ads that do not have DKI within them, this is largely down to the fact that they are going to appear more relevant to the search that the user has entered.
Landing Page Quality Score
When it comes to landing pages, Google likes to see that they are original, easy to navigate and transparent. After all, those people who visit are going to want to make sure that the website is relevant to their needs and useful for them to read through. Of course, whilst it is important to ensure that your landing page is appealing for Google, you also want to make sure that it is going to work for you and for advertising your business too.
Display Network Quality Score
As well as within the search network, Google will also give you a Quality Score within the Display Network too. This works somewhat differently than the search network, where the historical performance of your site, as well as those other sites which are similar to you is taken into account. Of course, the keyword relevance of your site is important, as is the quality of the landing page too. However, your Display Network Quality Score has different bidding options and different testing too.
Mobile Quality Score
More and more people are looking at websites on their mobile device, which means that it comes as no surprise that Google is looking at the Quality Score for mobile browsing. Google state that the Quality Score for mobile is calculated the same as it would be for computers, however, despite this, they will also take into account the location of the user and where this is relating to the business.
Do Quality Scores actually matter?
This is a question that many people seem to ask themselves. So, what is the answer? Do they matter? If you ask Google, then unsurprisingly they will say it does. After all, they see Quality Scores as a way to represent the relevance of your ads compared to the search queries of the users.
But what about from your point of view? Quality Score is definitely important, for a number of reasons. It can help you to decide whether not your keywords are performing well, which in turn will help you to ensure that your ads will show when a user searches on Google. Not only this, but by looking at your Quality Score, you can see what is worthwhile investing in for your advertising. Ideal if you are working to a tight budget and need to invest your money wisely.
The misconceptions of Quality Scores
As with many things in business, there are certain misconceptions that come with Quality Scores. But what are they and is there any truth in them?
Changing your match type will alter your quality score
When it comes to calculating Quality Score, Google doesn’t consider keyword match type. This means, if you have a broad match, an exact match or a phrase match, then this won’t change the Quality Score. Therefore, if you change the match type of your keyword, then you won’t see any change in your Quality Score.
Your Quality Score will suffer if you pause your Ad or Keyword
The Quality Score of your ad or keyword is calculated based on how well they perform. This means, if they are not active, then there is no Quality Score to calculate. Therefore, there is no adverse effect on your Quality Score should you decide that you need to pause your Ad or Keyword.
Your Display and Search Quality Score will have an impact on each other
These two Quality Scores are actually separate and do not have any impact on one another. Their criteria are different and they are also impossible for Google to be able to look at both alongside one another in order to put together a score.
Your Quality Score is impacted by your position with searches
Of course, it makes sense that your Quality Score would be impacted by the position of your website. However, the truth is that Google will actually consider the fact that higher websites will have a naturally higher CTR than those that are lower down.
You will erase your history if you delete or restructure your Low QA Elements
This one really isn’t true. Google state, no matter if you pause, restructure or delete an element of your account, then their historical performance will still stand, having an impact on your account. That said, Google do recommend that you delete those keywords and ads which are having a negative impact, as this will help your QS in the future.
What to do when your Quality Score goes down
Are you worried that your QS is reducing and you are not quite sure how you can get it back up again? If this is true for you, then you might want to take a look at the things to keep in mind when it comes to a reduced QS.
- Take a look at your URLs – Your URLs could have an impact on your QS. You need to take a look at these. Have any been changed recently? Are any of the URLS broken? Do they all lead to the landing page that you want them to? Are there any characters that are breaking up the URL including forward slashes, commas, apostrophes, parentheses and ampersands? By checking all of these things you can see whether or not your URL is working as it should.
- Check the speed of your website – Google likes websites which load quickly and will consider a slow loading website to be the regional average plus 3 seconds. If your website takes it time to load, then this is going to have a definite impact on your Quality Score.
- Look at your low click through ads – If your CTR is less than 1.5% then Google is going to see this as a low CTR. These ads should be rewritten to see if they can perform better.
- Ensure that you have at least 3 extended text ads in every ad group
- Always add top performing keywords to your ads
- Think about Dynamic Keyword Insertion to boost your CTR
- Audit your account – By auditing your account you are going to be able to see the areas that you need to change. You may find that it is going to be beneficial to pause your low CTR keywords, as well as create ad groups that are smaller and more tightly themed. You could also make sure that your landing pages are relevant as well as adding broad match keywords if this isn’t something that you already have in place.
Quality Scores may sound complicated, however, once you get to grips with them and understand more about how they work, you should definitely see a boost to the traffic and hopefully the sales on your website.
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