Why Is Quality Score So Important?
Quality score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and therefore your minimum cost per click and page rank. The score is determined by your click through rate, the relevance of your ad text keyword and landing page. Google believe that high quality ads attract more clicks encourage user trust and result in a better long term performance. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction.
Quality score is one of the most important factors when designing not only the AdWords campaign but your web page and keyword selection also. Google automatically evaluates all of the keywords in the account and uses the resulting quality score to assign a minimum Cost per Click bid for each keyword; this is the minimum amount you will need in order for your ad to run. Eligibility to run is the first step required to compete in the auction for a keyword, you will need to meet the minimum CPC requirements to be eligible. Keyword with a higher quality score will be able to enter the auction with more ease and at a lower cost. So the more you optimize you campaigns to increase quality score the cheaper advertising on Google will become. By increasing your quality score and decreasing your cost per click, therefore, your ads will show more consistently on Google’s search results without you having to spend anymore of your budget.
Having a lower quality score can render your keywords inactive for search thus leaving you with fewer keywords than necessary to work the campaign efficiently. You can activate a keyword by increasing the cost per click and leaving the quality score but this is dangerous as you will always pay more than your competitors for a click and you can not work with the system. So it is best therefore to optimize your account before paying more.
In the search network ad rank, that is to say, the position your ad receives on the page, is based again on the keywords maximum CPC and quality score. Quality score here is derived from your keywords click through rate in Google, and other relevancy factors. As, if you have high click through rates on the pages of the search results then your ad is deemed by Google’s team to be relevant to the search terms that the end user is searching with and so they increase your position on the page without increasing the cost that you incur per click.
Google will also check your landing page strategy for relevancy, this is to protect the searcher from clicking on an ad which tells them one thing but takes them to an irrelevant page. A highly targeted landing page especially on ecommerce sites will also help the advertiser as the less clicks that the user has to perform to get to the end the result or see the information that they wan the more likely they are to purchase form you and not go any where else as they have all of the information in front of the ready to buy.
By increasing the page rankings without increasing the amount that you pay for a click you can have a positive knock on effect into other aspects of the campaign. If you are in a good converting position like for example position 4 on the page then you will receive more clicks at less cost. From this increased level of clicks, if you land the potential buyer on the most relevant page, you can receive a higher level of conversion and a lower cost per conversion. This has all been at a lower cost than you would be paying if quality score was not considered by you and therefore not incorporated into your online advertising strategy. Quality score if used correctly to decrease costs, puts you in a better position on the page more consistently and will increase your level of brand awareness. By increasing brand awareness any repeat custom that you receive has the ability to come through to your site through your brand name, which will inevitably have a lower cost per click, thus decreasing costs further.
So, as you can see by taking notice of quality score you can improve your advertising costs greatly and get in Google’s good books. You can receive a lower cost per conversion, a higher page ranking and a more consistent ad viewing, all at a lower cost.
