Online marketers who are new to the Google PPC game may spend months (like I did) never understand the impact or even the meaning of the Google Ad Quality Score. With that said, I'm compiling the most helpful articles that shed light on score improvement theory. The fact is that Google Quality Ad Score improvement is not an exact science as it to some degree relies on human response (click through rates) to the ads that are written.

The difference between scoring high with your ads and scoring low could mean you are either 20 times more effective (dollar for dollar) or 20 times less effective than your competition.

Google has three scores - Poor, OK, and Great.

Here is what Google says about how they score ads:

"Keywords can have one of the following three Quality Score states:

Great: The keyword is very relevant and may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR), relevant ad text, and a unique, relevant landing page. The minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bid for this keyword may be low. If you'd like to lower your costs further, you can optimize this keyword's ad group by using more targeted ad text or improving your landing page content. Otherwise, this keyword is very relevant and effective for your ad campaign.

OK: The keyword may not be as relevant as it could be. It may have a mid-range minimum CPC bid, and while the keyword may not be very costly or extremely general, we still recommend optimization for the ad group. Optimization can lower your overall costs, draw more clicks to your ads, and result in a better return on your investment (ROI). To optimize, try using more targeted ad text and keywords or improving your landing page content.

Poor: The keyword isn't very relevant to users, and as a result may have a very high minimum CPC bid. We recommend that you remove this keyword and replace it with a more specific keyword. If you'd like to keep advertising with this keyword, you can optimize instead. To do this, try lowering the minimum CPC bid, writing a more targeted, relevant ad, or improving your landing page content. "

So, it seems that if you have a web page with good content (unique and relevant), a well written ad copy, and a high click through rate, you'll get a Great score. So, what does Google consider to be:Good Content?Unique and Relevant?A Good Click Through Rate?Well Written Ad Copy?Some answers are simpler than others. The fact is that Google is leaving a lot out with regard to optimization and this blog will explore articles that illuminate the facts about Google's Ad Scoring System to provide online marketers with a road map to PPC success.

One of our marketing partners, Ron Phillips at Premium ROI provides a nice article on optimizing Google Ad Scores.  This is a must read:

Quality score effects your keywords minimum cost per click and position in the search results and also if your ad will even show at all!


This is fundamentally the same for the other first tier Pay Per Click networks (Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter). There are many other factors involved, however this is the most transparency we're going to get from them at this time. For now, we will deal with the Google Adwords quality score.

Around the same time of the release of Yahoo! Panama, Google began showing keyword quality information at the keyword level in Adwords accounts. Google shows weather your score is Great, OK or Poor. It may not be much information, but it has been a great help for those trying to diagnose why their PPC bids are so high.

Last month, we had a new client who came to us for advice on lowering their minimum cost per click and ultimately increase their ROI. Our client was already experiencing a positive ROI using Adwords because of their products profit margin, however since Google started showing QS, they realized they were not doing as well as they thought. Their campaign was relatively small and they were paying an average minimum CPC of $0.40 across their three ad groups. Each Ad Group had 100 keywords in each. They also had a few disabled keywords. When we examined their account, we could see that almost 90% of their keywords had a "Poor" quality score.

Lets say our client sold "Blue Widgets". Here's what we did.

Campaign Account Factors
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1) Split Keywords into Smaller more targeted Ad Groups
We used the in built keyword grouper tool in Adwords editor to group keywords into 15 groups of 20 related keywords. eg:

buy blue widgets
exchange blue widgets
what is a blue widget
buy blue widgets online



2) Create relevant ad copy for each group
We then created an ad creative for each keyword group using the common grouping denominator "Blue Widgets"



Note the upper case on each word and use of the keyword in the title, ad copy and display URL. ALL 4 ads contained blue widgets in the same form as you see above. It should also be noted that the display URL does not need to match the ACTUAL URL exactly.

3) Optimize Creatives
We created 4 different ads for each group using different verbs and calls to action. We also turned ad serving optimization OFF so we could accurately split test all 4 ads. After a week, we chose the best performing creative and deleted the others. We then tried to increase the CTR by working on variations of that creative. After two weeks, it was plain to see which was the better performing ad. Within two weeks the overall campaign click through rate was up. Note that optimizing creatives is a never ending process. You can ALWAYS squeeze an extra 0.01% CTR by being...creative.



(This was not the creative used for the campaign)

4) Experiment With Matching Options
Our client was only using broad match for their keywords in their campaign. We added exact match and phrase match keywords to each ad group and chose which of the three had a better QS and lower minimum CPC and deleted the other two matching options. In the majority of cases, exact match won.



On Page Factors
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While we were working on the PPC account side of things, many of the on page factors were being worked on at the same time.

5) Implement Keywords
For each page we implemented most of the keywords into the copy.

6) Split Test Landing Page
We set up a multi variant test to split test the landing pages and test conversion rates. Google Analytics has an excellent write up on the major elements that can effect conversions. We cannot stress the importance of multi variant testing enough. Testing and optimizing conversion rates on landing pages is too big a subject to go into in this post. It should be noted that we also used heat maps to test the landing pages.

7) Meta Tags
We added the best performing keywords to the meta tags on each page. We also used the EXACT ad text from the best performing creative in the meta description. We also used the BEST PERFORMING and MOST DESCRIPTIVE keyword as the title tag.

8) Essential Site Pages
Although the site had a privacy policy, it was not linked in the navigation (Header OR Footer). We added the privacy policy as well as creating and adding an informative "about us" page, a "terms and conditions" page, a newsletter page and a new contact us page.

9) Make Sure Google Thinks You're Relevant
We used the Site-Related Keywords tool to make sure that Google thought the landing page was related to the keywords we are targeting. After a little "flushing out", Google saw each landing page as VERY related to the keywords we were using.

Clearly for privacy reasons we have left out many details regarding our clients campaign. We increased the campaign daily budget to twice what it was and left the campaign running for the month to get more accurate figures.

The Results:

Within four days the Quality Score for 60% of the keywords went from " Poor"to "Great" with average minimum CPC prices down from 40 cents to 4 cents.
All keywords that still had a poor quality score after the month (8 of them) were deleted.
Overall campaign click through rate was up 12%
We increased conversion rates from 3% to a whopping 24%
Our client was 100% happier.

Our client was able to slash their monthly spending budget and MASSIVELY increase their sales.

Conclusion.
Increasing you quality score and optimizing your Adwords PPC campaign is an absolute MUST if you want to reduce your spend and at the same time increase your sales. There are MANY other factors, known and unknown that go into improving quality scores, however the most fundamental have been covered. Most other PPC networks also use a similar QS ranking method and the areas I have covered can be applied to them too.

I hope this has helped anyone starting their first PPC campaign or anyone looking to improve their ROI by increasing their Quality Score.