Improve your Quality Score & Ad Rank – SpeedPPC

Crack the Quality Score code

A low Quality Score is Google’s way of saying that they don’t think you’re giving their users what they’re really looking for.

With a low Quality Score you’ll find that your bids are higher and it’s harder to get a good position for your ad. Basically it’s Google’s passive-aggressive way of telling you to take a hike.

But don’t be glum, chum. There are obvious things you can do to turn your campaigns around, and get back into the good books with Google.

#1 Improve your click-through rate

Perhaps the biggest thing you can do to improve your Quality Score is to improve your click-through rate. That means getting more people to click on your ad instead of someone else’s ad, or the organic results.

So aside from standing there shouting “FREE MONEY!”, how can you get more people to click on your ad? Let me introduce you to factor #2. . .

#2: Improve the relevance of your ad to the search term

When someone searches for Lady McIntyres Best Apple Pie Recipe, and they get results for breads, cakes and cookies… will that person be happy? No sir. Cookies are no substitute for apple pie.

Irrelevant ads not only hurt people’s opinion of Google, but they also make less money for Google. Our poor subject isn’t going to click on one of these irrelevant paid ads… she’ll just look in the free results.

One way to get in Google’s good books (and improve your Quality Score) is to make your ad highly relevant to the search term. Where possible, use the exact same words that someone is searching for.

To make this possible, most search engines have Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI), which inserts wildcards into your ad. These get filled with the search term dynamically. Great for getting those words in there… but not very flexible. You can only use the full search term, which often doesn’t make much grammatical sense. (And watch out if you’re using broad match! Things can get crazy!)

SpeedPPC has advanced DKI technology which allows you to write much more natural-sounding dynamic ads that Google loves. Your ads will sound like you hand-crafted them all painstakingly by candlelight over the course of a long Winter, when really it only took you five minutes for your entire campaign.

A further upside to natural-sounding, relevant ads is that they’ll get clicked more. And a higher click-thru rate also improves your Quality Score. Win win!

#3: Improve the relevance of your landing page

If our same user searching for apple pie recipes clicked on your ad and was taken to a website full of all sorts of recipes: Beef stew, potato salad, chicken cordon bleu… Will she be pleased?

Unlikely. This lady is only after the dessert course, and she’ll probably hit her back button quick-smart.

From Google’s perspective… they’ve already got the money. But this lady is less likely to click on paid ads in future because she has learned they’re not very relevant for her. So in the long run… Google loses money.

To earn a pat on the back from Google (and a good Quality Score), make sure your landing pages are relevant to the original search term.

SpeedPPC helps you build dynamic landing pages which give a user exactly what they’re looking for. Simple, but extremely powerful. And best of all, because it’s dynamic, you may only need one landing page for your whole campaign.