How To Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score – The Click Fraud Blog

So you want to become a pay per click master? To become an SEM Ninja, you’ll need to improve your Google Ads quality score.

To be a master, first you must know thy master. In the PPC advertising world the undisputed master is Google Ads.

Google operates by rewarding the strongest PPC ads while punishing all weak content. This is their way of maximizing the chances of clicks and conversions, giving both the advertiser and Google the best chance of making money.

You need to play by their rules, which means focusing on your ad relevance and quality. And if you’re playing to win, you’ll need to focus on constant improvement to your Google Ads quality score.

A little quality (score) goes a long way. The battle over keywords is becoming more fierce by the day. So having superiority over your competitors will determine whether you have a strong ROI or are losing money. The more competitive your industry is, the harder it will be to increase your quality score in Google Ads.

To find your Zen, focus on what you do best instead of trying to do everything at once.

Google does not reward average campaigns. So you’ll need to make sure that your Ads campaigns are as close to perfect as possible.

The more relevant and well designed your ad, the better your quality score. This will have a huge impact on the cost of your paid advertisement campaigns. The strength of your ad will not only generate more sales but its value to the marketplace will compound into lower costs for you, and more exposure.

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score is Google’s system of evaluating the strength and performance of your ads. It all boils down to: How relevant are your ads?

Analyze your internal metrics including click through rate and conversion rates. Are you proud of your performance? If the answer isn’t an emphatic “YES”, then you are losing ground to your competitors.

Google’s Quality Score is used to set your cost per click (CPC) amount and your position in the ad auction process. You can calculate your ad’s rank by multiplying the maximum CPC bid of your ad by your ad’s Quality Score. 

Better text, better design, better keywords and most importantly better results will help your improve your Quality Score.

What you need to focus on

Quality is a subjective term, so what factors go into determining Google’s score?

Your Google Ads Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including:

• Your ad’s click-through rate (CTR)
• Landing page quality and relevance to the ad itself
• Your historical Google Ads account performance statistics
• Keyword relevance to the ad group
• The relevance of your ad text

All of these factors are taken into account Google’s algorithm to finalize your “Quality Score”.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the imperative metric to optimize. When more people who see your ad end up clicking it, that is a strong signal to Google that you deserve to be showcased. Once they have determined that your ad delivers what your customer is looking for you will be rewarded with:

• Higher ad rankings, increasing visibility
• Lower cost per click, saving you money

Quality is always a WIN-WIN.

Is my Quality Score any good?

Google’s default Quality Score is 5. The score is scaled from 1 to 10. Where your Quality Score ranks (higher or lower than 5) will illustrate how you compare with your competitors in your industry.

If you are seeing poor results, with a low click-through rate then it is possible your Quality Score can fall as low as a 1 on the scale. A Quality Score of 1 will inflate your CPC by 400% compared to a standard score of 5.

On the flip side, if your ads are crushing it and users are constantly clicking it then your score can reach a perfect 10. A score of 10 will reduce your CPC by 50% compared to an average score.

In summation, a “good” Quality Score will be anything over a 5.

This makes Quality Score a relative metric. The more competitive an industry is, the higher the bar will be set. Scoring a 10 in an niche industry will be much easier than going up against marketing titans in a hyper-competitive industry such as tourism or e-commerce.

5 Tips to Achieve that Perfect 10

So let’s find out how to improve your Quality Score, and get closer to that coveted 10.

These tips will improve your Quality Score on your Google Ads campaigns, leading to a boost in your performance with higher visibility and lower ad costs. These simple adjustments can make a big difference:

• Landing Page Perfection – Your landing pages need to be relevant to the ad that users clicked on. If your ad is selling a premium coffee subscription, but the landing page is all about tea, chocolate and gift hampers, people are going to click back. Make special landing pages designed to maximise conversions on your campaigns.
• Your ad copy – Take a close look at your ad copy, and how often targeted keywords are used or appear. Ad copy needs to be relevant and engaging. You might even need to set up different versions of ads for specific keywords to improve the chances of raising your quality score. Check out our tips for writing ad copy.
• Keyword Research – PPC campaigns without keyword research are like turning up to a date in your PJs. You’re probably not going to see the desired end result… Use keyword research tools, look for long-tail keywords, niche search terms and look at negative keywords too. Talking of which…
• Negative Keywords – There are some keywords that will trigger your ad but might not be the best performing. This might be general, or root keywords. Understand what these poor performing search terms are and add them to your negative keywords list. This can save you a lot of mone in the long run and improve your Google Ads quality score. Read more about negative keywords in our guide.
• Block bad traffic – High bounce rates, multiple clicks that don’t convert and clicks from outside your target are all surefire ways to lower your QS. Blocking invalid traffic can actually be an incredibly effective way to increase your score. Using ClickCease is the most effective way to block non-converting clicks.

As good as you think your ads are now, there is always a higher level. If your Quality Score is not a 10 then you can do better. Much like life, Google will only reward the top 1%. Join that illustrious group now by optimizing your Quality Score.

Better quality with click fraud blocking

You can focus on delivering the best ad experience and make sure your website is fast, responsive, mobile friendly and easy to use. But, you can’t always account for those sneaky fraud clicks from bots or bad actors.

ClickCease is the choice of more professional marketers when it comes to filtering bots, malicious clicks and other invalid traffic. Improve traffic quality, and watch your quality score improve too.

Sign up for a free PPC ad audit with ClickCease today.