How To Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score

What Is The Google Quality Score?

The Google Ads Quality Score is Google’s way of measuring the relevance and quality of your Google ads, keywords, and landing pages. This diagnostic tool estimates the quality and relevance of your ad on a scale of 1-10. 

The score of 1-10 directly impacts both your ad position and cost per click (CPC). A higher score generally means you’ll pay less and rank higher on the page.

The quality score is calculated based on the expected CTR, ad relevance, and the landing page experience to provide you with an insight into your campaigns’ performance and to compare it to other campaigns.

A higher quality score indicates better relevance and usefulness to Google users. It also helps identify areas to improve your ad text, keyword choices, or the landing page content to enhance the overall performance of the campaign.

What Can The Google Quality Score Actually Do For You?

• Identify areas for improvement within your Google Ads campaign
• Help you improve the overall user experience of the ad campaign and the landing page, resulting in higher conversions.
• It doesn’t directly affect or influence your campaign at auction, but indirectly, you can get a better position on the ad for a lower cpc.

Why Is The Google Quality Score Important?

The Google quality score serves as a diagnostic tool for PPC specialists. The 1-10 scale helps indicate the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages compared to other advertisers.

It is beneficial for a campaign’s success, leading to lower CPC and better ad positions in the search results.

What does the Quality Score mean for advertisers?

• The quality score identifies areas for improvement within your campaign.
• It provides a sense of user experience and an idea as to how to improve the ad campaign for your users.
• The quality score can guide the strategic optimization of your ad campaigns.

How Is The Quality Score Formula Calculated?

Google doesn’t publish the exact mathematical formula for quality score, but we know there are 3 main components to quality score, and we know how they influence the score.

Quality Score is basically Google’s way of predicting how useful and relevant your ad will be to a user.

Quality Score = F (Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience)

Each factor is rated as either below average, average, or above average, and Google uses these ratings to assign your keyword a quality score between 1 and 10.

Expected CTR – Below Average / Average / Above Average.

Ad Relevance – Below Average / Average / Above Average.

Landing Page Experience – Below Average / Average / Above Average.

While CTR tends to carry the most weight, all 3 must work together:

• Great CTR but a bad landing page = low quality score
• Perfect landing page, but poor ad relevance = low quality score

The 3 Factors That Affect The Google Quality Score?

Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The expected CTR is an estimated click-through rate that Google expects how many people with actually click on your ad, taking them to the landing page. This is the single biggest variable in the quality score calculation, and it is based on the historical performance of that keyword, match type, and your ad’s position.

Ad Relevance

Ad relevance measures how closely your ad matches the user’s search intent and the chosen keyword.

For example, if your keyword is “emergency plumber London,” but your ad headline simply says “Affordable Plumbing,” the relevance is weaker.

Landing Page Experience

The landing page experience measures how useful and relevant the landing page is after the click. The landing page has to be relevant to the keywords chosen and match the intent of the buyer. Many factors influence the landing page experience, including content relevance, page speed, mobile friendliness, and transparency.

How The Quality Score Affects Auctions

Google will reward quality score because it provides a positive user experience and increases ad engagement.

The quality score doesn’t directly affect the ad campaign at an auction level, but it does influence it. We know that a Quality score is used to measure the relevance and quality of your Google Ad. A higher quality score would indicate a higher expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. This results in a higher ad placement and a lower cost per click.

Alternatively, a lower quality score leads to a higher CPC, lower ad placement, or even a failure to qualify for the auction.

Google uses ad rank in the auction. One of the biggest variables in ad rank is the quality score you receive from Google.

Ad Rank = Max CPC bid x Quality Score

6 Ways To Improve Your Google Ad Quality Score

There are various ways to improve your Google Ad quality score. These are the 6 most common ways, and how you would go about improving them.

Improve Ad Relevance

Improving ad relevance is a key criterion for improving your quality score. The Google Ad should be related directly to the search query. In order to improve ad relevance, you should make sure that your Ad copy closely matches the chosen keyword. An easy way to go about this is to add the main keyword into the headline and the description. 

Also, ensure that you use negative keywords, that the keyword and type of query match the ad. Lastly, always align the ad group with related keywords, and ensure you have sufficient negative keywords in that group.

Optimize Expected CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The click-through rate is another criterion for improving your quality score. Improving your CTR can lead to an overall improvement in your ad campaign’s performance. Ad relevance, as explained above, would help with the CTR because the ad itself is relevant to the query. 

There are ways to improve the click-through rate. The easiest is to add negative keywords, improve your headline, and ad placement on the page. The call to action also plays a significant role. When you are trying to improve your Click-through rate, you focus on writing compelling ad copy that encourages and entices clicks. You should also be running A/B testing, also called split testing. Your A/B testing should test different versions of your ad headlines, content, and even landing pages. 

Another way to improve your CTR is to use ad extensions like sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets.

Enhance Landing Page Experience 

Another way to improve your quality score is to improve your landing page. The landing page experience is a key criterion because it ties directly into how relevant the ad and the keywords are. The landing page should be fast loading and satisfy the query with the ad. 

The landing page itself should have the keywords sprinkled on it. It is likely that you may approach the keywording as an SEO would, with the keyword placed in the H1, H2, image alt tag, and 1st paragraph. The site and landing page should be mobile responsive and provide clear navigation with a strong call to action.

Lastly, use high-quality content, relevant content that matches search intent.

Refine Keyword Strategy 

Another tip to improve your quality score is to refine your keyword strategy. A great way to go about this is to choose keywords that are specific and less competitive. This will allow for lower bid prices and have higher conversion rates because you are going after keywords that have commercial intent.

With a refined keyword strategy comes continuously refining and reviewing keywords. Be sure to add negative keywords where necessary to prevent irrelevant clicks. Lastly, regularly pause or remove underperforming keywords. If they don’t benefit the campaign, shut them down.

Account Structure And Ad Group Organization

Improve your quality score by organizing your campaigns into smaller, tighter ad groups. Each group of keywords should be closely related to one another, and the ad should match them. The number of keywords is irrelevant as long as the keyword and the intent match the landing page’s content.

Ongoing Testing And Optimization

Ongoing testing is always going to be required when it comes to Google PPC. Ongoing testing means you should be running A/B split testing on ads, headlines, and CTAs to ensure you are getting the highest return. The PPC specialist should also track conversions and not just clicks through to the landing page. You want to be driving real traffic to your landing page and closing those clients.

Conclusion

There are many ways to improve your Google Ads quality score. We feel that improving your scores across each campaign can lead to a significant improvement in campaign performance, lowering your CPC and improving your PPC campaign’s profitability. How is your Quality Score looking?

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