As an agency, we run Google Adwords Campaigns in tandem with our SEO efforts for just about every single client we work with. Reason being, no different than most things in life, diversification is key to get long term results. When creating search-based lead generation campaigns for clients, the more page placements we can get the higher the chance of that client getting more qualified leads. On top of that, running a well optimized Adwords campaign can actually help your SEO efforts, but that is a topic for another time.
So what is the point here? Well, Google Adwords, now just Google Ads, is yet another online advertising channel that makes it super easy to get started, but once you get in the weeds it can be an extremely complicated platform. For the sake of being succinct in this article, I only want to talk about the one really important thing. The quality score of your Google Ads.
What Is A Quality Score With Google Ads?
While there is a lot that goes into calculating a quality score with Google Ads, generally speaking, it is a score that Google assigns to your ads out of 10 that is an indicator of how well your ad is resonating with those that are served the ad. The higher the score, the better the ads will perform and getting the score high is not as easy as many think, but first, let’s talk about why it is important.
Why Is Your Google Ads Quality Score Important?
There are a ton of different things that could be said here, but I am going to focus on two of the most important reasons that a quality score is important.
- CPC (Cost Per Click) – as a rule, the higher your quality score is the lower your cost per click will be.
- Reach (Impressions) – on top of a lower advertising cost as your quality score increases, your reach should increase with it. Again, Google wants ads that resonate well with the audience and that is one of the major things that the quality score reflects. So the higher the quality score, you will be rewarded with a higher reach.
How Do I Increase My Quality Score?
- Landing Page – If you are running all your paid traffic to the homepage of your website, it is unlikely that you will ever have a high quality score. While there are some exceptions, having a dedicated landing page for the service or product that you are advertising is your best first step to getting a higher quality score. For instance, if you are a plumbing company you may consider for all general inquiries to send them to a dedicated landing page that talks a lot about plumbing. For many clients, we may have up to 20 different landing pages for different products or services, solely with the purpose of driving up the quality score and conversions.
- Broad Match Keywords – This is an area of debate for certain, but many campaigns that we take over are just simply using broad match keywords. Essentially this just means that you are putting in some general terms and letting Google decide what keywords to serve your ads to. Based on a lot of experience looking at this stuff, this may be a good way to start a campaign, but not a good way to optimize it ongoing. Through the use of negative keywords, you can tell Google that these are not the correct keywords for your business. Also, through the use of exact match keywords, you can tell Google that these are the exact keywords you want to bid on. The more you hone in on this, the more the audience will respond to your ads and in turn, increase your quality score.
Google Ads Quality Score Summary
While what I outlined here is a great place to start, it is by no means an exhaustive resource to getting your quality scores up. The main objective here was to point out what a quality score is, why it is important, and some basic things you can implement if you are not doing them already. Industry experts in the Google Ads platform have thousands of hours of experience with managed Google Ads campaigns. Like us :). However, if you are the DIY type this is a great place to start. Hope it helps!