The most frustrating aspect of utilizing Google Ads may concern times when your ads did not reach the desired number of times as desired, or when your Cost-per-click was higher than you expected. More often than not, the reason for these concerns can be found in your Quality Score.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Quality Score is a very significant yet often misunderstood metric in Google Ads and provides you with an idea of the performance of your ad, keywords, and landing pages versus other advertisers’ ads, keywords, and landing pages. By understanding Quality Score and working to improve it, you can determine if your budget will be well spent or if you’ll see ongoing measurable ROI from your campaign.
This guide will discuss precisely what Quality Score is, how it’s determined, why you should be concerned with it, and, more importantly, the specific actions you can implement to improve your Quality Score.
What Exactly Is Quality Score?
Google uses a Quality Score (also known as QS), which can be rated on a scale from one to ten, to determine how well each keyword is performing across your accounts. This is how Google measures how relevant your advertisement is to the individual searching, as well as to the webpage that the user goes to after they click on your advertisement.
You can think of the quality score as your report card; it’ll tell you how useful your advertisement is based on how much its content relates to what users are searching for. When your quality score is high; it will show that your advertisement has been determined by Google to be highly relevant as well as useful. When your quality score is low, it will indicate that either your advertisement does not relate well to what users were searching for or that the landing page does not provide the experience the advertisement suggested.
Score Rating | Rating | Typical Impact |
1-3 | Below Average | Higher CPC, fewer impressions |
4-6 | Average | Standard ad auction pricing |
7-10 | Above Average | Lower CPC, better ad placement |
The Three Pillars of Quality Score
Advertisers use three factors to determine quality scores. These components are rated as either Above Average, Average, or Below Average, with the average of those ratings being the total quality score.
1. Expected CTR:
Expected CTR tells Google whether a user, when searching for a keyword that an advertiser has bid on (compared to all of the competitors), is likely to click on an advertisement. This value is based on the past performance of all advertisers for that keyword.
The higher the expected CTR value, the more likely the user will find the advertisement compelling and relevant to their needs. If the expected CTR is less than average, it usually means that the copy of the ad has not connected with potential consumers, and/or the keyword and the message of the ad do not match.
2. Ad Relevance
The degree to which your ad matches the intent of the searcher’s query is considered ad relevance. Having a keyword in your ad isn’t the only thing that matters; Google will look at how well the general message of your ad aligns with what the user actually wants.
For example, if someone searches for “cheap women’s running shoes” and your ad is about “sports footwear”, your ad will probably score lower in ad relevance than if your ad were actually about cheap women’s running shoes.
3. Landing Page Experience
Landing page experience measures the experience of the user after they click your ad. Google will look at the relevance of your landing page to the ad and keyword, if the user can easily navigate your landing page, if your landing page is mobile-friendly, and if your landing page provides a fast loading time. A bad landing page experience (even with an excellent ad) can have a negative impact on your Quality Score.
Transparency and trust are also considered by Google, so your landing page should clearly explain what your business does and should also allow the user to quickly locate what they were looking for.
Why Quality Score Matters: The Ad Rank Connection
Quality Score provides a tremendous advantage to you. Google will not simply award ad positioning based solely on who pays the most, i.e., the highest bidder. Google uses an index that it calls Ad Rank to determine which advertiser receives the highest positioning:
Ad Rank = Maximum CPC Bid * Quality Score * Estimated Impact of Ad Extensions.
This allows a smaller advertiser who has a higher Quality Score to obtain a better position above that of a larger competitor, even if the larger advertiser has bid a higher amount, and therefore has a greater budget available for their ads than does the smaller advertiser.
In very real terms, this means that:
- You will pay a lower cost-per-click for the same ad position or a better-quality position than your larger competitors.
- You will have your ads placed at a higher position on the search engine results page than your larger competitors.
- Your ads will be shown more frequently than your larger competitors’ ads.
- Your return on investment will increase because you will spend less and at the same time obtain a higher ad position.
The savings can be significant. Advertisers with Quality Scores that are higher than average can save as much as 50% or more on their cost-per-click compared to advertisers with below-average Quality Scores for the same keyword position.
How to Improve Your Quality Score: Actionable Strategies
Enhancing Your Quality Score Isn’t Going To Happen Overnight; It Requires A Detailed, Continuous Approach. Here Are The Most Successful Strategies:
Tighten Your Keyword-To-Ads Group Structure.
A Common Mistake With Google Ads Is To Have Too Many Keywords In One Ads Group. When You Place Dozens Of Related Words Into One Of The PPC Ad Groups, You Cannot Produce Quality Ad Copy For Every Keyword.
To Enhance Your Campaign Structure, You Must Create Well-Defined Ad Groups (Known As Single Keyword Ad Groups Or SKAGS). You Are Then Able To Create High-Quality Ad Copy, Targeting Multiple Keywords Allowing For A Significant Increase In Ad Relevance And Expected Formulas.
Write Keywords-Rich, Persuasive Ad Copy
Your ad copy must accomplish two tasks at once: it needs to contain the targeted keyword, and it needs to talk about the user’s intent of what they are looking for. An ad that is generic and applicable to any advertising will not be able to compete. Specificity will prevail.
- Primary keyword within headline
- A specific pain point or desire addressed in the description
- Call to action is very clear (e.g., Shop Now, Get A Free Quote, Book A Date)
- Provide benefits of your product – e.g., price, speed of delivery, expertise, etc.
Use Google’s Responsive Search Ads (RSA’s) to help test different combinations of both headlines and descriptions. Google will rank the ad copy based on which combination of ad copy produces the highest CTR.
Enhance Your Landing Pages
Your landing page is typically the weakest point in the chain of Quality Scores. Many advertisers put much of their focus on their advertisement, but neglect the post-click experience. A few important things to remember:
- Ensure message matching: The offer and the headline on your landing page should match what was advertised in your ad.
- Increase page loading speed: Use Google PageSpeed Insights to determine and fix speed-related issues on your landing page. Both Quality Score and conversions will suffer from slow-loading pages.
- Make it mobile-friendly: More than 60% of searches conducted through Google are done using mobile devices. Your landing page should be completely responsive.
- Lower friction: Remove unnecessary navigation from your landing page, reduce the number of fields in your form to a minimum, and place your Call To Action in a highly visible place.
- Build Trust Signals: Include testimonials, reviews, security badges, and clearly identify contact information.
Use Negative Keywords Strategically
Using negative keywords effectively helps keep irrelevant queries from triggering your ads and therefore helps improve your overall CTR, as users who wouldn’t have clicked on an ad had it shown up for an incorrect search will not click through to your website, thereby lowering expected CTR; however conversely when you prevent an ad from showing for an irrelevant search, that means fewer clicks for you hence improving your quality score.
To add additional negative keywords, regularly check your search term report to locate irrelevant queries that may trigger ads that do not match your offer; by continually reviewing and adding negative keywords, this alone will improve your anticipated CTR faster than anything else in this guide.
Leverage Ad Extensions
Although ad extensions are not directly related to your Quality Score, they can improve your anticipated CTR, and therefore, in turn, your Quality Score. Ad extensions, including sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets and call extensions, give users more reasons to click on your ad and provide more overall visibility on a search results page.
By adding ad extensions that match your keywords and landing pages, you will improve how well that extension performs over time, which will feed into your overall Quality Score.
Monitor and Iteratively Update
Quality score isn’t a static metric; it’s a constantly evolving number that changes depending on how much data is collected from users clicking on your ads, and also how competitor behaviour is impacting their quality scores. To get the most accurate picture possible the best way to monitor how well your ads are performing is to do scheduled reviews; weekly or bi-weekly are the best options. Focus these reviews on:
- Keywords that have below-average component scores.
- Google Analytics reports to find out if the landing pages linked to your ad are performing as expected.
- A/B testing results for variations of your ads.
- Searching for negative keywords that need to be added to your ad groups.
Common Quality Score Myths Debunked
Myth #1: A highly rated Quality Score means you have an effective campaign.
Quality Score indicates relevance and quality of user experience; however, it does not evaluate conversion metrics. You will need to create better optimized landing pages in order to convert ad clicks into paying customers.
Myth #2: I need to kill all low-rated Quality Score keywords.
There can be a number of reasons why some campaigns may not be performing well. One reason could be that the campaign keywords are too new and have yet to build the required impressions needed for them to be effective in generating conversions. Make sure that you allow some time for the new campaigns/keywords to complete their respective number of impressions before deciding on what action to take based solely on your Quality Scores.
Myth #3: Quality Score is the only metric that matters.
Quality score is one of many signals; conversion rate, cost to acquire a customer (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS) should also be used to determine overall performance.
Conclusion
Quality Score evaluates the Google advertising quality of advertisers based on how well they create a user-friendly product. In general, advertisers who create relevant, valuable experiences for their customers will receive lower CPCs, better placements, and greater volumes of impressions.
Improving your Quality Score is a completely manageable task. You’ll make it easier for yourself by maintaining the same quality of product experience across multiple platforms – through ad group structure, targeted ad copy, optimised landing pages, and refined keyword lists.
Your first step should be to identify the ad group with the “Below Average” Quality Score in your account. You should work to improve that ad group, and you’ll likely achieve positive results over time, thanks to cumulative small improvements. The cumulative impact of these improvements can create a significant advantage for you in terms of competition, as well as save substantial amounts of money on your advertising budget.
