Google Ads Quality Score – What Is It And How To Improve It

Find out how you can increase the quality of your PPC ads…

In order for you to make the most out of your Google Ads, you must understand the concept of Quality Score. These scores have a huge impact on the performance and success of your campaigns, including your costs, so it’s important to master this.

Keep on reading to find out more about what exactly this score is, what it means for your advertising campaigns and how you can work to improve your score to ensure the continued success of your Google Ads.

What is Google Ads Quality Score?

Google Ads Quality Score is a figure determined by Google that scores their view of the user experience and relevancy of your keywords, your PPC ads, and your landing pages. In addition, it is used along with your mass cost-per-click (CPC) to determine your ad rank in the auction process.

The score, ranging from 0-10, reflects the rating of user experience from initial ad interaction through to the landing pages that provide the user with what they’re looking for. With this in mind, it’s important to consider the different types of quality scores.

Account-level quality score
Ad group quality score
Keyword level quality score
Ad level quality score
Landing page quality score
Display network quality score
Mobile quality score

Google follows an ad rank formula when calculating an advertiser’s Quality Score. The formula is as follows:

Ad Rank = CPC bid x Quality Score

Even businesses with smaller campaign budgets can still work hard to optimise their accounts and increase their Quality Score, helping them to appear in higher positions in search engine results pages.

Ultimately, having a good Google Ads Quality Score is important for many reasons, but most notably due to its ability to decide whether your ad appears on Google Search. It can also have an effect on the overall health of your accounts.

How to check Google Ads Quality Score

Of course, you’ll want to check your current score before you can work on improving it. To do this is simple; all you need to do is follow the steps below:

Sign in to your Google Ads account
Select the relevant campaign and ad group
Select the keywords tab
Click “Customise columns” at the top of the ad group table
From here, choose “Show Quality Score” from the drop-down menu
Click “Done”. Now you can clearly see your Quality Score

It’s important to determine your Google Ads Quality Score sooner rather than later, so you can quickly highlight any areas that need improvement and begin the optimisation process.

Google Ads Quality Score factors

In order for Google to accurately determine your Quality Score, it must rely on certain factors, for example:

Your click-through-rate (CTR)
Keyword relevancy to its ad group
The quality of your landing pages and their relevance to the corresponding ad
The relevance and accuracy of your ad text
The performance of your historical Google Ads account

It is not exactly clear how much each component contributes to your overall Quality Score, so it is important to address each factor equally to ensure positive results. We do however know that overall, CTR is the most important component. This is because when people see your ad and click on it, this is a strong indication to Google that your ads are relevant and helpful to users.

How to improve your Google Ads Quality Score

Investing time and effort into improving your Google Ads Quality Score is highly beneficial for your business. Essentially, the higher the score, the lower your cost-per-conversion (CPC). This means that if you have a higher score, Google is happy that you are providing for user’s needs; therefore, Google will charge you less for each ad click.

Here are some of the top ways you can increase your score:

Keyword research – to discover highly relevant keywords to add to your campaigns, you should perform keyword research. Always remember to look out for long-tail opportunities too.
Refining ad text – you should test out the ad copy that is more targeted to individual ad groups. This is because more effective ads yield a higher CTR, which is a contributing factor to a good Quality Score.

Optimise landing pages –your landing pages should always be consistent with your ads and should provide users with the solution to their query. Follow best-practice landing page optimisation techniques to create pages that directly connect to your ad groups and aids with conversion.
Add negative keywords – you should always spend time researching and removing any negative keywords and irrelevant search terms from your campaigns. These terms may not only negatively impact your score, but also waste valuable budget.
Group your keywords – this can be another beneficial action to improve your score. Within your different ad groups, you can divide your keywords up into similar categories that are more relevant than having just one or two ad groups. This can also help you to write more relevant ad copy.

These are just some of the ways you can increase your score. Of course, there are further methods that can help. However, you may require the assistance of professional PPC management services if you wish to address these areas.

Do you need help increasing your Google Ads Quality Score?

Ensuring a high Google Ads Quality Score involves the management and improvement of various areas within the PPC umbrella. Our team of PPC experts can work closely with you to enhance your PPC campaigns to bring up your score. Contact us today to find out more.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to increase your knowledge of PPC, you can take advantage of our PPC training courses.