If you are a regular advertiser who uses Google Adwords, you probably already are familiar with Google's Quality Score. Each and every keyword within your adwords account is assigned a quality score by Google. This score is calculated by Google to represent how relevant your keyword is to your advertisement and destination.
Perhaps nothing affects your adwords account more than your quality score. This score influences your minimum bid amount and your ad position for each keyword in your account. Because ad position and pricing are so crucial to the success or failure of your efforts, comprehending Google's quality score is a necessary evil.
In order to try to keep ads related closely to what the user is searching for, Google decided to introduce the quality score to adwords. Ideally, users will experience a better result if the advertisements displayed next to their queries are closely related to their area of interest. This is both logical and a bit idealistic: as any algorithm-driven ranking system is bound to have some problems with understanding every single keyword.
Google has revealed the following pieces to its quality scoring system:
1. How closely a keyword is related to the ads in its ad group. This element should cause advertisers to implement their ads and keywords in closely related units, rather than tossing all keywords together in one group. Doing the later will likely lead to high minimum click prices and lower ad spots.
2. How the keyword has performed historically on Google.com. This element enforces a long-term aspect to your advertising efforts. If you don't take care to work on your ad copy for a given keyword consistently, you will very likely be looking at a higher price for your advertising well into the future. Users who have ads with a higher clickthrough rate(CTR) are rewarded, so writing relevant copy that attracts visitors is required.
3. How your entire adwords account has performed historically. Indeed, Google takes this into consideration when assigning your ad positions and minimum bids. There is no better time than the present to work on improving your account's status in the eyes of Google: improve your performance, or pay higher advertising costs.
4. The quality of your landing page. The destination URL that a visitor is sent to after clicking on your ad should display a page that is closely related, in Google's eyes, to the ad's topic. Landing page relevancy is a bit more abstract than the other factors, but it can weigh heaviliy on your overall pay per click performance. Sending users to relevant pages on your website will only help them find what they are looking more efficiently. Hence, Google rewards you for helping their search customers.
In the end, paying strict attention to, and optimizing for, Google's quality score for each keyword in your account will result in lower minimum bids and higher ad positions. Both of these factors affect your return on investment for your advertising dollars and are therefore worth understanding intimately. - 16651
Perhaps nothing affects your adwords account more than your quality score. This score influences your minimum bid amount and your ad position for each keyword in your account. Because ad position and pricing are so crucial to the success or failure of your efforts, comprehending Google's quality score is a necessary evil.
In order to try to keep ads related closely to what the user is searching for, Google decided to introduce the quality score to adwords. Ideally, users will experience a better result if the advertisements displayed next to their queries are closely related to their area of interest. This is both logical and a bit idealistic: as any algorithm-driven ranking system is bound to have some problems with understanding every single keyword.
Google has revealed the following pieces to its quality scoring system:
1. How closely a keyword is related to the ads in its ad group. This element should cause advertisers to implement their ads and keywords in closely related units, rather than tossing all keywords together in one group. Doing the later will likely lead to high minimum click prices and lower ad spots.
2. How the keyword has performed historically on Google.com. This element enforces a long-term aspect to your advertising efforts. If you don't take care to work on your ad copy for a given keyword consistently, you will very likely be looking at a higher price for your advertising well into the future. Users who have ads with a higher clickthrough rate(CTR) are rewarded, so writing relevant copy that attracts visitors is required.
3. How your entire adwords account has performed historically. Indeed, Google takes this into consideration when assigning your ad positions and minimum bids. There is no better time than the present to work on improving your account's status in the eyes of Google: improve your performance, or pay higher advertising costs.
4. The quality of your landing page. The destination URL that a visitor is sent to after clicking on your ad should display a page that is closely related, in Google's eyes, to the ad's topic. Landing page relevancy is a bit more abstract than the other factors, but it can weigh heaviliy on your overall pay per click performance. Sending users to relevant pages on your website will only help them find what they are looking more efficiently. Hence, Google rewards you for helping their search customers.
In the end, paying strict attention to, and optimizing for, Google's quality score for each keyword in your account will result in lower minimum bids and higher ad positions. Both of these factors affect your return on investment for your advertising dollars and are therefore worth understanding intimately. - 16651
About the Author:
Brian Basch has been in the field of adwords management for a long time and maintains a website about adwords consultant where you can get answers to the rest of your questions.
