PPC or Pay Per Click advertising is one of the most reliable methods for bringing in traffic. You have an enormous amount of control over the ad that you’d like to show, as well as where it will appear. This allows you to tailor your campaign to your needs.
With PPC advertising there are countless options for how you could advertise, but one of the most common methods it through the Google AdWords system.
Google AdWords allows you to advertise directly on the Google search engine results pages, as well as on peoples websites who use Google AdSense. In this way, you can have your ad appear alongside content that is relevant to your ad.
What is Your Quality Score?
Google AdWords recognizes that money isn’t the only factor that should decide whether an ad should be shown or not. Similar ad networks usually show the ads that bid the largest amount, but Google AdWords also factors in the quality of the ads.
The quality of your ads is a cumulative score of multiple factors and is turned into a single value known as your Quality Score.
Your Quality Score is graded between 1 and 10, with 1 being the lowest quality and 10 being the highest quality. In general, you will find that a score of 7 and above is considered good, while a score below two might result in your ad never being shown.
Why is Quality Score Important?
The Quality Score of your ads can have a huge effect on your overall campaign because it dictates what position your ad is shown in, as well as how much you will pay. This means that a higher quality ad might have to pay less for the same position as a lower quality ad.
Therefore, if you’re only working with a smaller advertising budget, then it’s particularly important that you focus on producing ads that will have a Quality Score above 7.
Structure Your Account Better
One of the simplest ways to improve your QS (Quality Score) is by arranging your account more systematically. Your QS is calculated as part of your keyword groups and having groups with a broad range of keywords can be considered as poor management.
Instead, it’s usually better to keep your keywords groups extremely tight, perhaps only using slight variations of your primary keyword within the group.
This is useful because it means that the ads which are shown are more precise, meaning that it’s more likely that the ad will align with the audience that it’s shown to.
Make Your Ads Relevant
Secondly, you should ensure that your ads are relevant and cohesive. This means that your keywords should be relevant to your landing page and also to the images that you use.
Doing otherwise can easily come across as misleading. For example; we all know that using scantily clad models in our images is an easy way to get clicks, but it’s misleading if you’re selling car parts.
Instead, you should ensure that you’re using relevant images and text to create a cohesive ad that is representative of what you’re trying to sell. This can help to boost your Quality Score significantly and doing otherwise can tank it.
Improve Your Landing Page
Your Quality Score doesn’t just consider the ad itself; it also factors in the quality of the page that it is pointing to. After all, the ad can be as good as anything, but if it takes you to a spam page that has pop-ups, then it’s a low-quality ad.
You should ensure that your landing page is ‘clean’ in the sense of being visually appealing and not invasive. Using pop-ups is a sure way for you to get a low QS, so, avoid anything that is bright, flashing or demands the user’s attention. This includes oppressive forms, i.e., squeeze pages.
Instead, focus on creating an informative page that offers the user exactly what the ad promised. The key to a high Quality Score is to advertise ethically and give the user an enjoyable experience.
Increase Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Finally, you must ensure that you’re getting a good CTR. Google AdWords charges you for each of the clicks that your ads receive, so both you and Google benefit when the ads get more clicks.
Therefore, they want to show the ads which get the most clicks per 1000 views. To get a great CTR, you need to have an appealing ad that is visually stimulating, grabs the users attention and uses language that encourages them to click through and find out more.