If you’ve ever wondered why your Google ad costs are always going up, even when your results stay the same (or get worse), it could be due to a low quality score. Google Ads’ quality score can affect everything about your campaigns. How often your ads appear. What position they appear in SERPs (regardless of
If you’ve ever wondered why your Google ad costs are always going up, even when your results stay the same (or get worse), it could be due to a low quality score.
Google Ads’ quality score can affect everything about your campaigns.
How often your ads appear. What position they appear in SERPs (regardless of how much you bid). How much you pay for a click. It can all be impacted by your quality score.
If you’re looking to improve PPC quality score, it’s a process of reviewing every part of your ad campaigns, from your PPC keyword research and targeting to landing page experience.
Google ads quality score is used by Google to rate the relevance and quality of your PPC ads, keywords, targeting and landing pages.
Using a score system of 1-10 (10 being best), your quality score is assigned for each keyword used in a campaign and is based on how closely your ad experience matches
the intent of the searcher.
For example, if the user is looking for a digital marketing agency, do the keywords and messaging in the ad and on the landing page clearly match that intent and promote digital marketing services?
If it does, your quality score will be higher.
Your quality score is based on three parts:
This assesses how likely it is someone will click on your ad.
This measures how closely your ad matches user intent.
This assesses how useful your landing page is in helping the user make a decision, how clear it is about the product or service being offered, and how quickly the landing page loads.
It’s worth saying that your quality score isn’t a KPI for Google, and won’t determine what you’ll pay for a click or where your ad will appear on its own. But it will influence your placement and costs, so it’s always better to aim for a higher score.
Because Google ads work on a bidding system (the highest bidder wins), you might think it’s worth the cost of a lower quality score if you’re still ranking in the top position.
But quality score is a key part of the auction system.
Remember, everything about Google SERPs (including ads) is about putting the most relevant and helpful content in the top positions.
When determining ad positions, Google uses a formula:
Ad rank = bid x quality score
This means ads with a higher quality score have a chance of outranking competitor ads, even with a lower bid.
Ads with a quality score of 8-10 can save up to 50% on the cost of a click compared to those with a lower score, according to Wordstream.
On the other hand, advertisers with a low quality score (between 1-3) could be paying up to 400% more than the average CPC for their particular keywords.
So, having a higher quality score means your budget will go further.
Credit: Wordstream
Because Google values user experience and relevance when it comes to the ads and content it shows, a low quality score could mean your ads aren’t shown at all.
This can wipe out your impression share, meaning your products and services don’t get in front of your audience.
Although it can take time to experiment and adjust ads to improve your quality score, there are some things you can focus on to speed up the process.
This is about making your ads more enticing, using clear headlines that outline the benefits of your products and services. CTAs like “25% discount”, “start your free trial”,
“download today”, “limited time offer” can encourage more clicks.
Adding sitelinks, call outs and structured snippets (like in the example below) can also improve expected CTR by giving users more places to go through your ads.
Ad relevance comes down to your keywords and whether the phrases you use in your ads match the intent of the user.
It’s best to group keywords into strict ad groups that match the same intent (like “buy”) and don’t try to mix intents within the same group.
Like core web vitals are important for SEO, landing page experience – especially page speed – is important for PPC and your quality score.
Landing pages should be fast loading (no more than 2 seconds) and optimised for mobile (around 65% of all Google searches are now on mobile).
Your landing page copy should also match the messaging in your ads.
For example, if your ad copy is about buying golf clubs, your landing page should be a sales page with clear offers for buying a set of golf clubs, not an information page on how to choose the right set.
You can see in the example below that Clubhouse Golf’s ad is promoting a Summer sale on golf clubs…
And when you click through to the page, you’re presented with a range of sale items (which matches the ad)
Some campaigns send users to a generic page on the advertiser’s website (like the homepage or a product page).
This can work for brand campaigns.
But we’d usually recommend creating a specific landing page for your ads that allows you to write copy that matches the ad, and allows you to be sales-focused on your page (without considering the SEO aspects you’d need on a regular website page).
Finally, add reviews, accreditations, feedback, awards or any other trust signals you have to your landing page that show users you’re a reliable provider of the product or service you’re advertising.
While the above improvements specifically target the three categories used in determining quality score, there are other ongoing improvements you can make.
Adding negative keywords to your campaigns can prevent you appearing for irrelevant searches, preventing irrelevant clicks, which can hurt your quality score.
Monitor how many users land on your landing page and leave without doing anything. High bounce rates could be a sign the landing page doesn’t match the expectations or intent of the ad.
Use A/B tests to try different language, sales messages, CTAs and other landing page elements that could improve engagement and conversions.
Don’t try to match multiple intents in one campaign. Instead, stick to one theme (buy x product) and build ads and landing page copy around it.
While it can seem trivial with everything else you’ve got to manage in Google ads, a low quality score can have a big impact on your campaign performance, costs and ultimately your ROI.
As we’ve shown, ads with a low quality score can end up paying significantly more for a click compared to an ad with a higher score.
Again, lower scores can mean your ad appears lower in search results, even if you’re bidding more than the competition.
Lower scores can mean your ads are shown less often (or not shown at all), which limits the amount of people who’ll see and click them, meaning you have wasted budget.
If you’re paying more for the same clicks, appearing lower than you could be, or aren’t showing at all because of a low quality score, it means you’re not getting the return on your ad spend that you could be with a higher score.
Fixing a low quality score can bring a lot of rewards for your ad campaigns, for not a lot of effort.
By creating relevant ads, matching them to fast-loading and effective landing pages and sticking to one intent per campaign, you can make your ads cheaper and more visible to get a better return on your ad spend.
If you’re struggling to improve your quality score or think you might be seeing valuable budget wasted in your ad account, get in touch with our PPC agency for a free strategy review with one of our PPC experts.
We’ll review your account and campaigns to identify the main areas for improvement that will give you better results in the least amount of time.
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