Improving Quality Score Part 1: Why Should You Care About Quality Score?

For the rest of the week, we’ll be posting excerpts from our new free white paper, “Improving Quality Score: The Value of Being More Relevant.” To download the full white paper (you’ll only get about half of it here), fill out the form below.

Why Should You Care About Quality Score?

Should you be concerned about Quality Score? You probably should, but let’s find out for sure. Take a look at this list and see if any of the following apply to you:

a)     You’re Paying Too Much – You’re annoyed at rising pay-per-click (PPC) advertising costs (or you wouldn’t mind paying less per click).

b)     Your Competitors Seem to Be Beating You – You wish your sponsored ads would show up higher than those of your competitors, but without having topaymore.

c)     You’re Dissatisfied with Your Campaign’s ROI – You want to run an AdWords campaign that maximizes profits and generates the most qualified leads, all while spending as little money as possible.

d)     Lack of Resources – You understand the benefits of Quality Score but don’t have the time or energy to do anything about it, and aren’t sure exactly where to start.

e)     All of the Above.

If you didn’t think “that’s me” with respect to any of the above, you probably aren’t doing any pay-per-click advertising. But if one or all of those problems apply to you, you’ve probably had some experience with Google AdWords.

The good news is there’s a single element that affects all of the aforementioned scenarios: Quality Score.

Improving your Quality Score will solve each and every oneof the problems outlined above.

In this white paper, we’ll provide an in-depth look at Quality Score, including how it’s calculated, why it’s important, and the specific advice that Google offers on how to optimize Quality Score.

We’ll also introduce WordStream, a software product specifically designed to improve Quality Score by simplifying, streamlining, and automating the repetitive, manual tasks that Google recommends in order to create high Quality Score ad campaigns, such as:

• Finding specific and relevant keyword opportunities.
• Excluding irrelevant searches with negative keywords.
• Grouping thematically related keywords.
• Authoring specific, descriptive, and relevant ad text.
• And doing it all over and over again…

After reading this white paper, you’ll have a clear understanding of what work needs to be done to realize the benefits of higher Quality Score, and you’ll know exactly where to start.

Let’s begin!

What Quality Score Means to You

We’ll start with the importance of Quality Score. Quality Score helps determine:

• If your ad is eligible to be displayed alongside a user’s organic search results.
• Your minimum bid and minimum first-page bid estimate.
• How much you pay every time a user clicks on one of your sponsored ads.
• The position in which your ads appear in the sponsored search results.

Furthermore, because Quality Score measures the relevancy of your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages, and since relevancy is so crucial for successful search marketing, Quality Score is a good predictor of the results you’re likely to realize after a user clicks on your ads and winds up on your site. By bidding on relevant keywords, with relevant and descriptive ad copy, and creating descriptive and relevant landing pages, you’re more likely to attract qualified leads and achieve higher conversion rates.

An increase in relevancy is good for everyone:

• It ensures that customers find what they’re looking for.
• It affords advertisers an opportunity to be rewarded for creating advertising that customers want.
• It provides the search engines with a sustainable profit stream centered around connecting the two groups through search.

We’ll go into more depth on the importance of Quality Score to your online marketing efforts later in the paper, but since it’s evident that it’s a crucial component of any paid search campaign, and because Google AdWords, MSN Search Center, and Yahoo all use similar relevance-based systems for ad serving, we’ll turn our attention now to understanding how Quality Score really works.

(More: Revisiting the Economics of Quality Score: Why QS Is Up to 200% More Valuable in 2013)

Get the Free White Paper: