How you can pay less for your clicks by improving your ‘Quality Score’.
Ok, first things first. Here’s how Google defines their Quality Score:
Quality Score for Google and the search network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.
It’s a bit of a mouthful!! I’ll explain how it works in a minute, but the key is that the more relevant your ads are, the higher the Quality Score & the lower price you pay.
The benefit of Adwords Quality Score is that the system offers a win - win - win proposition. Advertisers with the best ads pay less and get more clicks, users get results to match what they search for and Google makes more money, because people are more likely to click on relevant ads (and are more likely to come back to Google again & again).
According to Google, some of the key factors they take into account when calculating Quality Score include:
- The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
- Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
- The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
- The quality of your landing page
- The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
- The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
- Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
- Other relevance factors
In short, it’s all about relevance - the keywords have to be related to the ads, the ads have to be relevant to the searches, the page you send people to has to mirror what they search for. Even the click through rates (CTR’s) are about relevance, because the closer the ads match what the Google user is searching for, the higher the CTR you’ll tend to get.
Just keep in mind that when people use Google, they are looking for something specific. If your ad matches what they are searching for and you give them what they want, they win, you win and Google wins. And as a result, you’ll pay less.
And there’s an extra bonus too. Not only will you pay less per click, you’ll also get more business if you offer what people are searching for.
In Day 3, things will become clearer, when we’ll show you a sample campaign, and outline the vital ingredients that every Google Adwords Campaign needs.