Who wants to ride the Quality Score / CPC See-Saw?
May 24th, 2008 by Click Consult
The most difficult part of a new PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign is always the start. On those first few days and weeks, you enter into the fray with zero Quality Score (QS) and go up against rivals who have had months or even years to accumulate QS on their PPC campaigns. QS is Google's reward for relevancy and it is the secret ingredient that gets your ads higher and makes your CPCs (cost-per-click) lower. In a way, QS is like a barrier to entry for a new firm looking to start a new PPC campaign.
So how do you overcome this barrier to entry? Why, you need to ride the quality score/CPC see-saw, of course!
I won’t lie … the see-saw is an expensive ride at the beginning of your PPC campaign. Two factors determine the position of your ads: QS and CPC bids. Indeed, they are like a see-saw – a higher QS rating means lower CPCs for you, and vice versa.
As you have no QS to begin with, you need to tip the see-saw in the direction of the CPC side and tolerate pricey clicks for a while. You have to inflate your initial CPC bids and set them artificially high in the early days of a campaign – this will compensate for the lack of QS on your account and get your ads in the mixer and in a visible position on the first page of the search results. Once you have let the campaign run for a few weeks and you have built up your CTR (Clickthrough Rate), you can then tip the see-saw the other way, as you will have enough QS to drop your CPCs to a bid that is more reflective of what your established competitors are paying.
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[...] The most difficult part of any Google campaign is always the start, as you enter the fray with a zero Quality Score (QS) rating on every keyword and go up against established advertisers who have been building up QS for years. For that reason, you need time to maintain a high Clickthrough Rate (CTR) and get some QS for yourself. Or as I like to say, you need to ride the QS/CPC See-saw! [...]