How do you Improve your PPC Campaign – Top Ways to Improve your Quality Score

The days of setting your bid, making some ads, and selecting your keywords and calling it a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign are long gone.  You can thank those that bid on keywords and their landing pages really had nothing to do with them.  Google now has a whole formula that takes the keywords in your ad group and analyzes them against the landing page you are directing them to.

What’s the Quality Score do?  Well, for one the higher the Quality Score the better you rank, for less.  So it’s something you want to pay attention to and work on.  Whether it means tweaking your ads, segmenting your keyword list better, or creating new landing pages.  If you need help with this, call ICND now for a free consultation.

Google will rank your Quality Score based on a number of factors.  Here’s a few we’ve we’ve put together for you:

•    Your Click Thru Rate – The days where it was easy enough to just have a great, relevant ad that people liked to click on are long gone, but it still matters, a lot.  Make sure your ad pertains to your keywords and gives people a reason to want to click on it.  This will help higher your quality score.

•    Your Entire Account – Your entire accounts click thru rate is a factor in the way Google calculates your Quality Score.  If you’ve added a lot of keywords that haven’t had clicks in months, go in and delete those keywords.  You can always add more, but deleting these keywords with low click thru rates will increase your overall click thru rate, thus improving your Quality Score.

•    Your Display URL – Google keeps record of your display URL along with your click thru rate for the entire length of time of your account.  If you are new to adwords and want to practice, experts advise using a practice URL as to not to put low CTR on your main URL.

•    Your Focus and Relevancy to Keywords – It’s better to be very granular with your adgroups than to bundle a bunch of different keywords into one adgroup with a generic ad.  Say you’re trying to get Myrtle Beach keyword terms, separate each bundle of terms pertaining like north myrtle beach generic term, south myrtle beach generic terms, then Myrtle hotel keywords, North Myrtle Beach keywords and so forth.

What you’ll end up with is a bunch of adgroups with 10-25 keyword phrases per adgroup.  It may seem like a bunch of work to manage, but making it any larger will hurt your relevancy to the display ad.

•    Your Relevancy to the Search Query – In real time, Google with caluculat yoru Quality score based on how well your ad and keywords fit what people are searching for.  It won’t affect how much you pay, but how well your rank.

•    Your Geographical Performance – Google will also calculate your Quality Score based on how well you perform in certain geographical areas.  If you perform better in Charlotte, NC than you do in Roanoke, VA you’ll rank better for Charlotte.
Your landing’s page content and relevancy – This is where you will affect how much you pay, but not where you rank.  Your page should be built out for SEO, with authoritative domain name, inbound links, relevant content, original content, quick loading, and include credibility indicators such as a link to about us, contact us, etc.  A page that already ranks well in the search engines will also help.

•    Don’t use excessive opt-in or registration tactics without offering a lot of relevant, useful information. But, you do need to make it easy and quick for customers to purchase whatever it is was featured on the ad or you are trying to sell.

Remember, the best way to improve your quality score by increasing relevancy throughout your keywords, adgroup, text ad, and landing page.  Make sure they all connect and pertain to each other.  ICND is here to help.  Give us a call today for a free consultation.