Want to know how you can save money and make money at the same time? Improving your quality score of course! We are going to look at what quality score is, what impacts it, and some simple tips to improve yours.

What is Quality Score?
AdWords Quality Score is a value between 1 and 10 telling you how relevant Google thinks the keywords, ads and landing pages to one another, for your PPC campaign. This value dictates how Google determines your Cost per Click (CPC) and also how often your ads will appear.

Where can I see my Quality Score?
Within your AdWords account:
* Select your campaign.
* Click the “Keywords” tab in your AdWords account.
* Click “Columns” then “Customize columns”.
* In the section that opens up, choose “Attributes”.
* Click on the “Add” link in the Quality Score row.
* Click “Apply” to save. You should now have a QS column in your data.

How is Quality Score calculated?
The factors that Google use to judge your quality score are:
* Your click-through rate (CTR).
* The relevance of each keyword to its ad group.
* Landing page quality and relevance.
* The relevance of your ad text.
* Your historical AdWords account performance.

Why should you care about Quality Score?
Essentially, lower scores mean you pay higher CPC, higher scores mean you pay less per click. Taking a value of 5 as the median, Wordstream.com estimated that a quality score of 10 would see a 50% reduction in CPC against a quality score of 1 increasing CPC by a whopping 400%.

In short, increased quality score means reduced CPC, potentially leading to increased conversions, and reduced costs per conversion – win, win, win!

How can Quality Score be improved?
Here are three key areas to focus on to improve your Quality Score:

1. Keywords – ensure your keyword lists are correctly organised into small, tightly-knit groups containing the most relevant keywords for the ad, and your campaign. Do your research, if you haven’t selected the right keywords for your campaign then you won’t stand a chance. It can be of significant help to your campaign to identify negative keywords also.

2. CTR – it has long been felt that the expected click through rate of the ad is the most crucial factor Google use for quality score. Thus, the text used in your ad is always the first stop to ensure that the ad copy is in tight alignment and resonates with the associated ad group’s keywords. Be sure to use firm, effective language with a clear CTA.

3. Landing Page – key factors to a positive landing page experience include ease-of-use/navigation, trustworthiness and a clear call-to-action (CTA) towards whichever conversion path is desired. Closely linking your ad text with the landing page headline along with careful use of keywords throughout will lend themselves to improved relevance.

Need help with your digital advertising campaigns? Drop us an email at info@socialcoregroup.com today and we will be happy to discuss where we can help you.