companies know by now that quality score is a very important factor that affects the performance of your search advertising. It’s the rank in which your business is rated in terms of relevance and usefulness for someone searching the web for your products or information. The higher your quality score, the better ranking you have. That being said, it’s important to consider how to improve your quality score in the New Year.
Back to the Basics: How Your Quality Score Works
Search engines calculate quality scores with a couple of things in mind. First, they look at the quality of your landing page along with your text ad and keywords that are being used. Second, they examine your keyword clickthrough rate when determining your quality score rating.
You can find your quality score by signing into your AdWords account and either running a keyword performance report (to see your keywords quality scores), clicking the status command button (to get a quality number value), or by using the customized columns command (to get a “poor,” “OK,” or “great” rating). All three options are in your AdWords account and can be easily found under the keywords or reporting tab.
Quality Score New Year Improvement Tips and Tricks
Improving your quality score is not that difficult if you understand how to go about it. Knowing how Google calculates things to give you your score, you can work on improving the areas that are in need of improvement. It is possible for you to improve your quality score with a little diligence and work on your part. A few tips include:
- Advertisement Relevance. Google typically looks for text ad relevance. Including a keyword that is relevant to your website is important, and make sure the keyword is in the content of your website. It is important that your keyword match a search term when clicked, so don’t just bid on keywords. Google assigns it a quality score based on its clickthrough rate from other search engines. The higher your quality score, the less money it is out of pocket for you when someone clicks on your ad.
- Landing Page Quality. Google recently announced that landing page quality will have a great impact in your quality score rating. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that your landing page has the content inside it that a user would expect it to have in it after clicking on your site. Nobody wants to spend a good amount of time searching for something inside a page that is not going to give him/her what he/she was looking for.
- Keyword Groups. Placing your keywords in groups is also a great way to stay organized, which will in turn help your quality score rating. Try not to have too many key words in each group of ads. A good number in each group is usually three to five keywords. Each group you create should have a separate ad copy. The fewer keywords you have in each group, the better because they will be more prevalent to your ad, therefore, boosting your quality score.
There is no one way to improve your quality score, but the above tips should get you started in the right direction. Remember to always stay focused and organized and you will have an easier time boosting your quality score. It is really up to you and how you use your keywords that will help you achieve the high score you are looking for.
Have you ever had success improving your quality score? Let us know your tips in the comments below.
Photo Credit: evereffect.com
Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from algorithm updates. She writes for HigherVisibility, a nationally recognized SEO consulting firm that offers national and local SEO services to a wide range of companies across the country.
