Everything You Need to Know About Google Ads Quality Score
You probably have heard of Google Ads’ Quality Score. But what is it? Google’s Quality Score is a ranking system that determines how relevant and good your ad is. Google uses this information in their ad auction to determine where your ad will be placed. And ideally your ad is at the top.
The Quality Score determines that alongside your bid and consists out of three different factores you can influence. Landing Page Experience, Expected Click Through Rate and Ad Relevance.
In this article I will explain to you what this means and how you can influence these factors in your favor so you can improve your Quality Score.
Factor 1: Landing Page Experience
The Landing Page Experience is about matching your User’s Experience. In short: does it match the expectation on what the searcher is looking for, and does your website work smoothly?
Send to a Specific Page
First of all, make sure the search query matches up with your landing page. Are the keywords present on your landing page… perfect! If not, you might want to create a new landing page or find another landing page that might be more relevant.
It’s always better to send someone to the most specific page possible, then to a generic home page where the searcher has to look for the right answer. Most of the time they will drop off.
Page Loading Time
There are also technical factors that influence your Landing Page Experience. One of the most prominent ones is the Page Loading Time. This tells Google how quickly your page loads. If it takes longer than 1 second for your page to load, your users will drop off and look for a competitor they opened up at the same time. On top of that, it also takes a look at how mobile friendly your website is.
Curious how well your website performs technically? Go to PageSpeed Insights by Google an fill in your URL. This little machine tells you how well you’re doing and what you can improve. Often times it talks about your mobile user experience and how easily you can navigate your page.
The image above is the an example of how PageSpeed Insights shows you how well you perform. This is an example of how Google ranks my website. My desktop page looks like it’s performing alright with a score of 75, but my mobile website only gets a score of 33 at the moment (oops, I know and my apologies if you’re on mobile right now). This will probably penalize future ads.
Factor 2: Expected Click Through Rate
The Expected Click Through Rate is the likelihood of someone clicking through onto your ad whenever it is shown for a specific search query. Google wants their users to have the best experience and Google prioritizes showing ads that they know will most likely perform well.
So when your Expected Click Through Rate is listed as below average, you can expect to pay a premium for your ads to even be shown. Or you might not even be shown at all. It’s important to include your keywords in your ads, so it manages the expectations of whomever that is searching.
For more details on how you can improve your CTR and Expected Click Through Rate, read “4 Tips on How You Can Improve Your CTR on Google Ads”. But the first step is to use your keywords in your ads whenever possible.
Factor 3: Ad Relevance
The Ad Relevance says it already: how relevant is your ad in relation to what people are looking for? If you search for “trainers” and you get to see an ad about “high heels”, something obviously went wrong.
So how do you avoid this? Avoid putting 50 keywords together, and rather split them up in separate ad groups. I personally recommend having between 5 – 15 keywords per ad group. Of course, this can differ between industries and your account set-up.
For example: “trainers” you put together with “sneakers”. “High Heels” obviously doesn’t fit the other keywords and should get its own ad group instead.
Why Is a Good Quality Score Important?
If you have a poor quality score you can expect to pay a premium, or not the be shown at all. Google values a great user experience and expects advertisers to live up to that expectation.
If you want to perform well, reduce costs, get more traffic, get to the top position whenever your ad participates in an auction: you need to work on your quality score.
How Can You Improve your Quality Score?
So how can you quickly improve your Quality Score? Let me summarize:
- Include your keywords in your ads to improve your relevance and manage expectations
- Make sure your page loading time is quick to prevent any traffic from dropping off, and make sure your website is mobile friendly
- Send users to the most specific landing page possible to live up to their expectations
- Tightly group keywords together whenever possible. P.S. this also helps you control costs when using a manual bid strategy.
- Always keep your customer in mind and what they’re looking for and what kind of ad they want to see
I hope you learned something new and now know what the Quality Score is and how you can improve it. Are you unsure how can improve your Quality Score or do you have any questions? Then don’t hesitate to reach out to me through any of the contact forms.
Gitta
