Why It Matters and 6 Steps to Improve It

Running an advertising campaign is not an easy task. From narrowing down your target audience to designing your landing page, there are many pieces of the puzzle.

After you’ve done all of this work, you’ll want to make sure your ad is ready to bid. Google Ads helps advertisers ensure high quality ads by assigning them a Quality Score.

Not sure what that is? Let’s see what a Quality Score is, how it will appear on your account, and how you can improve it for your next campaign.

Google wants to match users with the most relevant ads because they only make money when users click on the ad. So if they regularly run low quality ads, they won’t make that much.

To determine an advertiser’s Quality Score, Google looks at how other advertisers have performed for the exact same keywords over the past 90 days. If not enough data is collected during this period, no score will be displayed.

Does Your Quality Score Affect Ad Rank?

When bidding, your Quality Score will not be taken into account by the Google algorithm. Your quality score can signal how your ad will be placed, but it is not a direct entry into the auction.

However, there is no direct correlation between your Quality Score and your Ad Rank. A low Quality Score indicates that your ad is not providing a good user experience. As a result, your ad may not rank well.

Think of Quality Score as a diagnostic tool that can help you create a more relevant and useful ad for your target audience.

Now that you know how it works, let’s talk about the three components that make up your Quality Score.

Components of the quality factor

In the past, QA was a predictor of click rate (CTR). Before assigning the Quality Score, Google used the CTR to weed out irrelevant ads or ads with a higher cost-per-click (CPC), according to the Search Engine Journal.

Even today, the expected click rate is a component of the quality factor. It refers to the likelihood that your ad will be clicked once it’s seen. Here are two additional factors that will affect your Quality Score:

• Ad relevance – How relevant your ad is to the keyword or ad group, based on the intent of the user.
• Landing page experience – How useful your landing page is when people click your ad.

You will receive a partial number of points for each component: below average, average or above average.

Contrary to popular belief, your Google Ads history doesn’t affect your Quality Score either. Here are other factors that aren’t measured in your Quality Score:

• Devices used in the search
• time
• Ad extensions
• Location of the user

Why the Google Ads (formerly AdWords) Quality Score is important

The main reason to look out for your Quality Score is cost: The higher your Quality Score, the less you will get pay per click. And that comes straight from Google.

Even if there is little competition for your keywords, if your ad quality is poor, you might still be paying near your max CPC.

With that in mind, make sure your ad meets Google’s quality standards.

From a value perspective, your Quality Score can help you optimize your ad for better performance.

Knowing where you land in each component can ensure that users enjoy every stage of the ad experience, from seeing your ad to landing on your LP.

For example, your Quality Score could show that ad relevance is above average, but your landing page is below average. From there, you’ll have a clear direction on what to focus on in order to improve your ad quality.

If you want to view past Quality Score statistics for a specific reporting period, you can select one of the following options and click Apply.

1. Quality factor (history)
2. Landing page exper. (hist.)
3. Advertisement relevance (history)
4. Adult click rate (hist.)

1. Review your Quality Score components.

Whenever you are trying to increase your QA, the first thing to do is to find your Google Ads account. What is the expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page?

If you’ve listed “Average” or “Below Average” for a category, these are the items you want to tackle first.

While they all play a role in your score, working on your CTR or LP has twice as much impact as working on your ad relevance, according to Search Engine Land.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about your ad relevance score. You might just want to focus on these two and then tackle ad relevance.

2. Optimize your keywords.

If your ad relevance score is low, there are a number of things you can do to improve it.

The first is to make sure that the keywords in your ad group are relevant and that they all have the same intent.

For example, let’s say you have these two versions of an ad group:

• 1 – Puzzles, puzzle games, kids games, kids puzzles, online puzzles, online puzzles to solve
• 2. – Children’s puzzles, puzzles for children, puzzles for 3 year olds, puzzles for 5 year olds

The first ad group is scattered – it contains general terms such as puzzles, as well as specific terms relating to the type of puzzles, as well as puzzles online.

The second group, on the other hand, focuses the ad group on puzzles for children. If a user searches for any of these terms, the intent is likely to be the same, while the ad in the first group may not be relevant.

Second, you should make a list of negative keywords. This will prevent your ad from showing for keywords that have a different intent than your ad.

3. Check the speed of your website.

The speed of the website can have a huge impact on the user experience. If your page is taking too long to load, users will get impatient and will leave your site quickly.

If you’re already getting paid to get a user to your landing page, the last thing you want is slow load time to distract them.

To test the speed of your website:

• PageSpeed ​​Insights – Provides a quick but thorough look at your website’s mobile and desktop performance. You can test your website for free and no login is required.
• HubSpot Website Grader – Want to Test Everything on Your Landing Page, Including Security, Performance, and SEO? Use this tool.
• Google Analytics – If you already have an account, you can access the website’s speed data by:
  • Navigate to your view.
  • Open “Reports”.
  • Choose Behavior, then Site Speed.

4. Target your ad to your landing page.

Ever go into a store and ask a salesperson where something is? They direct you to aisle 7, you get there and it only takes a few seconds to get frustrated because you still can’t find what you are looking for.

You don’t want your users to have that experience when they get to your landing page. It should always do what it says on the tin.

For example, let’s say your ad is about puzzles for kids. Your landing page shouldn’t contain puzzles for adults, teenagers, etc. It should be specific to the ad so that the user gets exactly what they’re looking for.

If a consumer needs to look around as if they just landed on your home page, they can just leave.

Also, don’t forget to check your URLs and make sure they are working properly. A wrong forward or back slash, ampersand, hyphen, or bracket can corrupt your URL.

5. Test your copy and CTA.

When a user sees your ad on Google, you only have a few seconds to get their attention. What makes them click your ad instead of a competitor’s?

Keep this in mind when creating your copy and CTA.

Highlight a unique advantage that sets you apart from your competitors. Say you’re selling kids puzzles and you’ve won awards, you want to showcase that. Or maybe they are sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Leverage the details that you think will resonate best with your target audience.

Also, use action verbs that have power and evoke emotions.

6. Optimize the mobile experience.

Imagine running an ad only to find out later that most of the clicks are from mobile users, but your landing page wasn’t designed for mobile shopping.

Nowadays, the mobile experience is just as important, if not more important, to users surfing the web.

When designing your landing page, make sure it is responsive (i.e. mobile-friendly) to ensure that it works well on all types of devices. Don’t just work on the LP, the entire shopping experience should be smooth, including:

• Visiting product pages
• Check out

You should also think about pop-ups and other interstitial pages that can affect the user experience.

Your Quality Score is a diagnostic tool that you should use to optimize your ads. With so many factors that may be beyond your control regarding ad performance, there are opportunities for you to control and improve.