What is Quality Score?
If there is one segment of pay-per-click that keeps me tossing and turning at night – it’s Quality Score. For those of you familiar with Quality Score, you understand its importance in saving you money and displaying your ad at a higher position. Quality Score is a numeric value between 1 through 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest that is given to each keyword within your PPC campaign. This number is determined by a very complex algorithm that Google has created in order to help rank how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and user’s search query.
Why Use Quality Score?
Just imagine if every hotel using PPC was able to control their ad solely by how much they were willing to bid on each keyword – that’s a pretty scary thought! This methodology would mean that the company with the highest PPC budget would win, even for keywords that they weren’t relative to. This scoring system is in place to ensure that there is an even playing field amongst businesses and helps users find the most relevant information.
Tips to Improve Your Quality Score:
- Create Very Targeted AdGroups
One of the biggest mistakes PPC marketers make is that they try to clump all of their keywords into the same AdGroup. If you want to improve your Quality Score, separate them as much as possible. For example – accommodation keywords, lodging keywords and hotel keywords should all have separate adgroup. I would bet you could break down the your hotel keywords to be ever more specific! - Use Your Keywords in Your Ad Title and Copy
You don’t have many characters to play around with when writing your ad, so make sure to use keywords contained in the AdGroup you’re writing for. This will make your ad more relevant to what search terms are triggering your ad and make it more likely to be clicked.
- Optimize Your Display URL
Something as simple as adding a keyword to the end of your display URL can help your ad stand out. For example, if you’re targeting boutique hotel keywords make your display URL www.example.com/boutiquehotel. Remember keywords are bolded when they match the user’s search query.
- Send Them to a Relevant Landing Page
Get out of the habit of sending every ad to your home page. If your ad is targeting “suites”, send them to a landing page that has ample information about your suite rooms. Also, let’s not forget what the main goal of your campaign is – to convert to a sale. Quality Score aside, you want users to find exactly what they are looking for when they click on an ad directing them to your site and you want to provide them with relevant information when they get arrive without having to look around. - Create More Than One Ad
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! Create numerous ads per AdGroup and test them to see which one has the best click through rate and then use that copy moving forward.
If you really want to work on improving your Quality Score, get in the minds of your consumers and write copy that is compelling, interesting, informative, targeted and most importantly, makes them want to click. The goal is to get your click through rate as high as possible as this has a direct influence on your Quality Score. The more often your ad shows and is clicked on you are positively effecting your score.
If you make changes and start noticing that your click through rate is improving but your quality score doesn’t change don’t get discouraged! Your campaigns historical click through rate factors into your Quality Score so give it time to improve your average – think big picture!
