Understanding Adwords Quality Score

Like I mentioned in my post, Understanding Search Engines, SEARCH ENGINES ARE BUSINESSES. Because of this, all of their activities are based on making them the most money. Google Adwords is no different. They make the most money on the ads that are clicked the most. Therefore, the most important number in Adwords is CTR. To ensure that they are displaying the ads that make them the most money possible they created a scoring method called the Google Adwords Quality Score. Two factors influence your quality score: CTR and the congruence of your AdGroup.

The relationship of the two is an upward spiral to the top of the paid listings. The more congruence you have; the more people click on your ad; the more people click on your ad; the better CTR; ad is displayed. The higher... well look at the "Congruence Tornado:"


Congruence in Adwords Adgroups

Congruence in Adwords is based on the three factors you control: Keywords, Ad Content, and Landing Page Content.


People are most likely to click on your ad if it talks about the keyword they searched for. They are more likely to stay on your landing page matches the ad that they clicked on. The more each of these elements compliment each other, the better your congruence will be. The best way to get a high quality score is to build a landing page to focus on a single keyword, and create an ad group with an ad based on that keyword, and then bid on only that keyword. That leaves you in the most control.

Other Quality Score Issues

Of course there are other factors that affect your quality score as well. Your bids, your bounce rate, conversion rate and other factors will affect your quality score, but the best way to improve your quality score is to make sure all of your ads are congruent as possible from keywords all the way to the landing page.

Actionable Steps to Improve your Adwords Account:

Find the Quality Score: First, you need to know what your quality score is for your keywords (In the new layout you will have to activate the column: Click "Filter and View" Then select "customize columns" Select Quality Score).

Take Out the Trash: Delete any keywords that have a quality score of 3 or lower from the adgroup. If it has a low quality score it will reflect on the whole ad group. If you turn the Congruence Tornado upside down the same thing happens. Low quality score leads to lower placement, less clicks, lower CTR, and a worse quality score. DELETE THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Categorize your Ad Groups: After you have deleted the garbage keywords look at the other keyword quality scores. If your quality score is not an 8 or above, start by better categorizing your ad groups to match the ads. Be sure that you are only bidding on keywords that are in the Ad title for the ad group. If you are running multiple ads for the ad group, be sure that all your Ad titles include the keywords you are bidding on.

Optimize Your Landing Page: The landing page content should reflect good keyword strategies. (See the earlier post: 3 Powerful Keyword Strategies See also 5 Crucial Tags for Keywords) By optimizing your page for the keywords you are showing google that your landing page really is about the keyword you are bidding on.

Spice up your Ads: If you don't have a quality score of 9 or 10 you need to do some editing of your ad text. Congruence can only get you a quality score of 8 ( I have only seen this a few times 7 is much more common.) Add words that make people want to click on your ad so that it is more enticing. The specifics of that are for a later post so subscribe to my feed to be sure you don't miss it!

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