Increasing your quality score on Google AdWords is not just good for bragging rights. It can also be helpful to increase your pay per click profits and the position your site or blog shows up in advertising. Increasing your score can be an indication that your ad or website is doing well. Without the score, you might not know some of your current features are hurting you rather than helping you. In the long run, it can also save you time and money in making sure you are using the right keywords. 

The AdWords quality score will tell you the measurement of aspects like the quality of your user experience, relevancy of keywords, and how your pay per click advertising campaign is performing. Once you understand what your quality score is and why it is important, you can begin to work on the factors that affect your score. 

What is the Quality Score, and Why is it Important?

A quality score is a rating from Google that indicates the relevance and quality of the keywords you are using and your pay per click. You can use it to figure out what your cost per click will be. It can also help you to determine what your ad rank is in the auction process. If you have a lower quality score, you can take some steps to heighten your score. There are many factors that make up a quality score. All of them are very important to the process. 

Using a quality score is important because it can give you important information about your performance. It can tell you what is going well and what is not going well. Once you know what is not going well, you are more equipped to fix it. This score can help you save time and money, can help convert visitors into loyal customers, and can help you to figure out where you stand as opposed to your competition.

What are the Most Important Factors that Affect a Score?

There are many different and relevant that affect a quality score. They are listed below and explained in more detail in the following paragraph: 

• How relevant keywords are to your ad group

• Click Through Rate (CTR)

• The quality of your landing page

• Relevance of text in your ad

• User experience

• Your historical performance

Together, these factors determine your score, and can also help you to understand what you need to do differently to get more traffic and clicks on your website. Think of this score as similar to a credit score. You must take into consideration your history of AdWords performance, among many other factors. Having the right keywords are very important to increase your quality score. It is measured by how relevant the keywords you use are to your ad group. An ad group is a set of keywords that are shared by an advertisement. This is how people find your website or product. Another factor that affects your score is Click Through Rate (CTR). This rate is measured based off how often an ad is clicked on per the number of impressions.

Another important factor that is put into consideration of your quality score is the quality of your landing page and user experience. Together, the relevance of keywords, CTR, the relevance of text in your adds plus your landing page performance and user experience are what make up your quality score. There is not much information as to what factors are worth each part of the score, but they are all important to how you are scored. One of the most important components is the click-through rate (CTR). This factor shows whether or not your ads are relevant to Google searches. The higher your score, the higher your ratings, and the lower your cost.

1. The First Step is Knowing the Factors

By reading the above information, you have already taken the first step into increasing your quality score in Google Adwords. Just as you must understand the factors that affect your credit score in order to improve it, it is the same when it comes to your quality score. The first thing you need to do is understand what the factors are that affect your score. These factors are not all created equal, but it is also not clear as to what percentage of your score each factor is.

This is why is very important for you to know all the factors. It is not just one or two factors that you need to work on to increase your score. You should work a little bit towards each of these factors, so that you can see an increase. Once you know what it is you need to look out for, you can begin to make changes towards raising your score. There is no way your score will be increased without first understanding the factors that affect it.

2. Improve Your Score by Targeting Your Ad Groups

Your score will be improved if you design your ad groups into more targeted campaigns. This will help you to heighten the importance between searching and the actual ad. When you start to set up your campaigns, use as many different ad groups as you need to, as long as they are relevant to the keywords being used. If they are not relevant, don’t use them just to use them. If you only have a couple of ad groups using the same keywords, this will not make your ads relevant to your users because it will be difficult to find the specific ad they are looking for.

Each group of ads should have its own set of relevant keywords. This is the only way that you are going to be able to effectively target groups that you are interested in. Ensure that keywords being used are logical and match what the ad groups might be looking for. There are tools you can use to figure out what keywords are most relevant to your ad groups. By targeting your ad groups with specific keywords, you can work towards improving your quality score.

3. Research Keywords

Before using your keywords, you should know how they are performing in the grand scheme of things. As with anything, it is a good idea to research what you do before you do it. Keywords are one of the most important aspects that affect your quality score. When a user types words into a search box, the words that they use will determine whether or not your site or ad will pop up. There are so many keywords out there. It is not just about the words themselves, but the combinations used when being searched are just as important. When you are picking which keywords to use, the research can tell you what keywords are being used, how important they are to users, and what opportunities they have to really pull in traffic to your website.

4. Write AdWords Ads That Are High Quality

As with any type of writing, words that are well written are more likely to draw customers in. Without high-quality ads, you may not get the results you want. What is a high-quality ad? A high-quality ad will focus on one product or service so that you can really draw in the type of crowd that you want. Ads that are scattered offer more than one product and are not as effective. Customers want to feel as though they are really and truly getting what they want and need from your ad. When the ad is scattered and includes too many components, it will actually drive your customers away. Ads that are neat and tidy will have more of an impact. By writing AdWords ads that are higher quality, you will be able to increase your quality score.

5. Work on Your Landing Page

You might not realize how important your landing page is to visitors, but if you think about it, it is quite often the first page that people see. If your landing page is not in good condition, is not easy to use, and is confusing to your visitors, then your quality score will be lower. Think about how important your landing page is. This is why it is important to consider using an analytics site to run statistics on your landing page. Some to consider are Google Page Speed Insights and Google Mobile-Friendly test. By figuring out your score on your landing page, your development team will be able to determine what needs to be done in order to make improvements and therefore raise your quality score.

You should also consider making sure your landing page has relevant keywords. This is sure to get more users interested in your content. For each ad group, you may want to consider having important keywords that are unique. While it may not be possible to design a landing page for every single ad group that you have, you can increase your overall score, as well as user engagement this way. The happier your visitors are when they view your ad, the more likely it is that they will become customers. 

Another important aspect of your landing page to keep in mind is making sure you decrease the time it takes to load. This can be crucial to making sure visitors stay on your page until it is fully loaded. When a landing page takes too long to download, your visitors may consider going elsewhere.

6. Make Your Ad Groups Small

There are times when size does matter. In this case, it matters if you are making your ad groups smaller than others. While it is usually recommended to use 15-20 different keywords per ad group, this is not always the best advice to take. This won’t help your quality score. It can be extremely difficult to run an ad that has between 15 and 20 relevant keywords. You may find that it is difficult to run one ad that is relevant to multiple search terms. Strategists and researchers have suggested that using between 1 and 10 keywords per group is more beneficial than using 15-20.

While those two pieces of advice might seem like they are very far away from each other, this is an actual way that you can improve your quality score. If you think about the name of the rating, “Quality Score”, you can remember that it is about the quality of your keywords, not the quantity of how many keywords you have. The smaller the ad groups, the better off your score will be.

7. Try Using Negative Keywords

The interesting part of this piece of advice is it isn’t what you would expect. You might even be asking what negative keywords are. Negative keywords are ones that you include in your ad groups that actually prevent your ad from showing up. This sounds counterproductive. Here you are figuring that the keywords you are using are helping you to gain visitors when, in fact, they are turning people away from your site. When the negative words are used to search, your ad is not going to show up to the searchers.

So, why are we discussing this when we are supposed to be figuring out how to increase your score? This is because negative keywords can actually be beneficial in some way. You can use keywords to make sure that people who are not in your target ad group are not finding your ad. Surprisingly, this will increase your click-through rate. This is because when people are clicking on your ad, you don’t just want them to click it because it has shown up since this is probably not what they are looking for. You want people to click on your add because it is relevant and that is what they are looking for. By using negative keywords, you can actually increase your quality score.

8. Expand Your Text Ads

Expanded text ads are a feature that allows you to run an add with longer copy, or words. Having the use of 50% more characters can be beneficial to increasing your quality score. One of the greatest features of expanding text ads is that you can use long tail keywords. This can be very beneficial to your ad groups. You get more space for search terms that are longer than normal. This means it makes it simpler for people to find you. By using long tail keywords, you will be able to boost the relevance of your ad. When you boost the relevance of your ad, you are also increasing your quality score.  

9. Avoid Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Google AdWords has a feature called dynamic keyword insertion. While some may benefit from using this particular feature, you should not use it when looking to increase your quality score. Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) is a tool that will enable you to put a user’s search term exactly how they have typed it into your own ad copy. While, ad first, this seems like it would be something that is beneficial, you will find that it can really cause a decrease in your quality score.

This type of keyword insertion can also make others think your message is not written well. This will cause your marketing to fail to do its job. The best way to handle this is to make sure you know what words are being used in your ad copy. Another consideration is that if you are already using limited keyword ad groups, then you do not need to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Final Words

Now that you know more of the important information about what specific factors can affect your quality score, how your score can be increased, and what you need to look out for, you can use Google AdWords for all your needs when it comes to your quality score. A quality score will help you grow your business, gain more customers, and will save you money in the long run. This score can be a beneficial part of your market research. Use it to ensure that your website or ad is doing the job it was meant to. It will help you to determine what is happening on your website or ad and what you need to do in order to improve it. 

The first step to improving is to figure out what is happening and what needs to be fixed. Give all of your users the best possible user experience by ensuring that the steps you are taking to make their lives easier are working. There are many factors you can change in order to be sure you are working towards increasing your quality score. Some of the factors are simple to change, while others might take a little more time. If you think back to your credit score, you can’t fix that overnight. This is the same when it comes to increasing your quality score. It won’t happen overnight, but it is important to work at it a little bit at a time.

Author: Garenne BigbyWebsite: http://garennebigby.com

Founder of DYNO Mapper and Former Advisory Committee Representative at the W3C.