Archive for the ‘Quality Score’ Category

So, you’ve added all your keywords, written some fantastic ads and linked each to relevant landing pages that are guaranteed to sell your business. It’s now time to decide on your AdWords bid management strategy.

You’re on a tight budget (let’s face it who isn’t) and your profit margins are small. The minimum bid for most of your keywords is 10 cents so let’s start there and work up – right?

Wrong!

The Right AdWords Bid Management Strategy

A bid management strategy that starts with low bids on all your keywords will typically mean your ad position will also be low. This will translate into a low click-through-rate (CTR) for your ads and CTR is one of the most important factors in determining your Quality Score (QS). The lower your CTR, the lower your QS, the more you pay in bids.

When introducing a new keyword to your campaign, always start by bidding high to secure a top ad position on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Top ad positions typically get clicked on more often and this will help you too build up a good keyword history.

Remember, your keyword history can either make or break your AdWords advertising. Ensure your new keywords don’t start to build up a poor history right at the start or you’ll pay for it in the long run.

Don’t Make This Mistake And Drop Your Bids Too Fast!

So, now you know that the smart thing to do is bid high to build up your keyword history. But what should you do next?

Suppose that you were to start bidding an average of $1.10 for a position #1 against a reasonably popular keyword.

Within a couple of days, you might find that you have a fantastic CTR, your QS is looking good and your average cost-per-click (CPC) has dropped naturally by 10 cents. Conversions are coming in, but you’re loosing money fast.

The problem is that your AdWords bid management strategy is now  hammering your advertising budget, and crippling your very small profit margin.You’re spending more on advertising than you make in profit.

Desperate to reduce your bid prices and make that all important transition from cash-draining to comfortable profit, you drop your bid down to $0.95, so it is just below your average CPC?

Could be a bad move?

Your ad position will likely drop along with your CTR. And this could be fatal if you’ve not given Google enough time to fully fall in love with your campaign.

The safer option is to hold off dropping your bids for a couple more days. Then, each day, drop your bids a little bit at a time until you reach that vital balancing point between profits from conversions and costs per sale.

The same principles applies with your bidding strategy. Keep your nerve and hold that high ad position for four or five days at the start. Then drop your bid prices slowly and monitor your conversions often. Keep on dropping your bid price a little at a time until your ad position reaches that nice sweet spot between costs and profits.

Although this AdWords bid management strategy might be costly at the start, you’ll almost certainly get back all you’ve lost and more through lower bid prices in the longer run.

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Adrian Key is a professional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. If you found this article useful, subscribe today and claim your free ebook.

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Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This month we would like to thank Lewis for the question:)

I started running an ad 5 days ago without a hitch and as of today all of my keywords show the status of “rarely shown due to low quality score”. The status detail explains my landing page quality is poor.

I don’t understand the problem with the landing page. My hired development company was inserting Google Ads yesterday and there were some glitches for a couple of hours. Would this have caused the big drop in quality score?

There are two issues here, either of which could be causing the problem.

Google Ads On Your Landing Pages
Google takes a dim view of advertising on AdWords landing pages – yes even it’s own advertising programs. My advice to customers is to avoid placing ads on any pages that are being used as AdWords landing pages. But, if you really must include advertising, then ensure that the level of ads on your page is kept to an absolute minimum.

If it’s the ads that are causing your problem, then try removing all of them from your landing page. Wait a couple of weeks and if your Quality Score jumps back up, then add the ads back again one at a time.

You’ll need to wait at least three or four weeks between each change to give AdWords a chance to revisit your landing page. Keep adding ads until you’ve got the amout of advertising you want or until your Quality Score takes another nose dive.

Site Outage
Another possibility is that your web site was out of service or the pages were loading very slowly when AdWords came around to visit.

Whenever you set up a new campaign, AdWords will give you a provisional Quality Score based on the keywords you’ve chosen and the ad you’ve written. A few days later, AdWords will send the AdWordsBot around to evaluate your landing page and if it doesn’t like what it sees then your Quality Score could fall dramatically.

If your site was down or web pages were loading very slowly when the AdWordsBot comes to visit because your development company was adding your AdSense code, then this would have a big effect on your Quality Score.

There is little you can do about this but wait until the AdWordsBot comes to visit again. As you’re starting a new campaign, this should happen in a few days.

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Subscribe to this blog, get your free ebook, and be informed by email everytime we answer a readers question.

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Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This week we would like to thank Dustin for the question:)

Could a low bid negatively effect my Quality Score and how long does it take for changes in click-through-rate to be reflected in the Quality Score?

Quality Score is a subject that we get asked about a lot and these two questions are very typical of the many we answer every day.

Let us start by asking “What is Quality Score and how is it calculated”?

AdWords calculates a Quality Score for each of your keywords. It’s updated frequently and is the measure of a number of different factors including how relevant your keyword is to the user’s search query, the ad text that it triggers and the landing page to which you send your visitor.

In general, a high Quality Score means that your ad appears in a higher position on the results page for a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

By far, the biggest factor that affects your Quality Score is the click-through-rate (CTR). Every time someone clicks on your ad searchers are registering a vote with Google on your ads relevance to their query.

In this way, Google gets help from millions of people in determining which ads are best for each search query, letting users decide what is most relevant.

Could a low bid negatively effect my Quality Score?

The actual amount that you bid on a keyword combined with your Quality Score will determine where your ad appears on the results page for any query that you are targeting.

Research shows that the higher your ad appears on the page, the more clicks it’s likely to attract. It would therefore be logical to bid high, get the best position for your ad and therefore the highest Quality Score.

But AdWords doesn’t actually work that way. In actual fact, your Quality Score is normalized dependent on your ads position. Google expect ads in a lower position to have a lower CTR and compensates for it in its calculation.

You should therefore optimize your bidding strategy to position your ads where your sales are most effective rather than where they attract the most clicks.

How long does it take for changes in click-through-rate to be reflected in the Quality Score?

A keywords Quality Score is calculated every time that your ad is triggered by a search query. However, not all the factors that make up your Quality Score are reviewed every time your ad is shown.

For example, optimize a broad match keyword by adding an extensive list of negative keywords and the CTR for that keyword may start to rise. If the increase in performance is sufficient then you could start to see a gradual increase in your Quality Score within days.

However, if you are making changes to your landing page then these will not take effect in your AdWords campaign until Google next visit your website. It could therefore take a few weeks for these changes to be reflected in your Quality Score ratings.

In reality, there are no hard and fast rules. The best advice is to make gradual changes and monitor the effect of those changes on the performance of your AdWords campaign.

Closing Thoughts

It’s very easy to get obsessed with improving your Quality Score, so it’s worth remembering that the most important judge of your website is not AdWords but your customers.

If you have keywords with lower Quality Scores and your web pages are pulling in sales at a profit then who cares about what Google think. Learn to serve your customer needs and not Google’s.

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. After you read Your AdWords Review, you will feel the power that comes from knowing exactly what you need to do to make your AdWords advertising more profitable.

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Dear AdWords Adviser!

Every week we answer one of the many questions you send us. If you would like the answer to your question then send it to:)

www.dearadwordsadviser.com

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This week we would like to thank Christian for the question:)

What are your 3 most effective strategies for improving Quality Score?

What an excellent question you’ve asked. Quality Score is one of the biggest problems AdWords advertisers face and without doubt, the only way of improving it is through relevance - let me explain:)

1) Relevant Keywords

You should choose only those keywords that are related to your niche and divide them into small ad groups, containing no more than five to ten closely related keywords.

For example, if you are selling widgets, then phrases like ‘blue widget’, ‘buy blue widget’ and ‘blue widget sale’ belong  together. But phrases like ‘green widget’ and ‘best yellow widget’ belong in their own ad groups of closely related keyword phrases.

2) Relevant Ads

Your ads need to relate closely to your keywords. The easiest way of achieving this is to ensure that your main keyword is included in the ad title and once in the description.

If you can also include the keyword phrase in the display url and the destination url then that’s even better. But space and website restrictions can often make that difficult.

Should you have two or three keywords in the same ad group that could easily be your main keyword, then consider splitting them up, putting each keyword into its own ad group.

Remember you want your ads to reflect your best keywords and you can’t do that if you’ve got multiple very popular keywords in the same ad group.

3) Relevant Landing Page

Making your landing page relevant to the keywords in your ad group doesn’t mean you have to include every keyword phrase in your text and it doesn’t mean you need to flood your landing page with all your most popular keywords either.

For best results, design an individual landing page for each of your ads. This can involve a lot of work, but it also allows you to create a strong focus in the landing page for your main keyword.

Write an eye catching title for each of your landing pages that includes your main keyword phrase. Also ensure your main keyword phrase is included in the first and last paragraphs of text as well as about half way down the page.

Most important is that you don’t force your text. Keep it all flowing naturally. If, in order to achieve a natural flow you need to include your keyword phrase more often, then don’t be afraid to do so. There are no hard and fast rules.

Ideally, your landing page will include links to other pages within your website that are on the same subject. You’ll also want your images to be labelled to include your main keyword phrase in order to further reinforce its relevance.

Remember, when reviewing your landing page, AdWords will also take a look at other pages on your site. It’s therefore worth creating a website that is very specialised and has lots of content about your niche rather than one that is more general.

But, most important of all, when designing your landing page keep in mind not to compromise conversions just to please Google. You still need a web page that will sell to your prospects.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot more that I could write about Quality Score. It’s such a big subject, trying to cover it all in an answer to one question is near impossible.

Probably the most valuable piece of advice I can give you is to be patient. Don’t make the common mistake of making lots of major changes one after the other because you haven’t seen any instant improvement in your Quality Score rating.

When you make changes to your AdWords campaigns, particularly to your landing pages, it can often take weeks or even months for the full effects of your changes to appear in higher Quality Score ratings.

For more hints and tips about improving your Quality Score, you’ll obviously want to keep reading the AdWords Adviser. But, if you want more information now, try a visit to this resource:)

http://www.squidoo.com/adwords-low-quality-score

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Adrian Key is a profesional AdWords consultant and editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Subscribe to this blog, get your free ebook, and be informed by email everytime we answer a readers question.

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Have you ever been frustrated by Google telling you that your AdWords landing page is no good? And before long, does your feeling of frustration turns to anger, because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t work out why Google is having such a problem with you?

If you’re like everyone else in this situation, you’ll have already tried contacting the AdWords support team and got nothing back from them other than some very general automated replies that are not really of any use to anybody.

But creating AdWords landing pages that Google will approve of doesn’t have to be difficult.

We have collected here for you some links to articles that will help you create landing pages for AdWords that Google will love!

The 7 Landing Page Mistakes To Avoid

Any one of these 7 common mistakes that we see advertisers make every day are guaranteed to impact your Quality Score, get your ad disapproved or, in extreme circumstances, ensure your site is banned from AdWords altogether.

AdWords Bans: Poor Landing Page Quality Scores ~ PPC Blog

Ensure the landing page and the ad are identical in terms of subject matter. Click-backs can affect your quality score, so make sure you repeat the keyword term high up on the page, in bold, in your copy. This also helps reaffirm to the …

Improving the quality level with multiple landing pages

You can improve your quality score with multiple landing pages that are more targeted to your keywords. In the previous article I looked at how to improve your Google quality score (QS) by creating a mini-site. …

Creating Landing Pages For Google AdWords

In creating a Google AdWords campaign, advertisers typically spend most of their time creating their ads and researching their keywords. There’s often very little or no thought to where the surfer can be sent when the ad does its job …

If you’re like many Google advertisers, you’ll be very frustrated by your AdWords Quality Score.

You’ll be regularly hammering your fist against the table with anger because your score is stuck at 1 or 2 and no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to get it to rise.

But what is AdWords Quality Score, why is it important and how is it calculated?

Understand the answers to these questions and with this newly learned knowledge you’ll be able to improve the Quality Score for all your keywords and save money too.

What is AdWords Quality Score?

You’ve got to wonder sometimes, what is the purpose of Quality Score?

Over many years, Google has built its now considerable reputation by providing users with relevant search results to queries. Quality Score is their way to ensure that only the most relevant AdWords ads appear to users.

Why Is Your AdWords Quality Score Important?

The reality is that AdWords calculates a Quality Score for a keyword every time it matches a search query. In general, the higher a keywords Quality Score the lower your bidding costs and the higher the position your ad will appear.

What this means to you is that the higher the Quality Score for your keywords, the less you pay in bids.

How Is AdWords Quality Score Calculated?

If you’re like most people, when you start using AdWords for the first time you might find the way your Quality Score is calculated and keeps changing very confusing.

The reality is that when you create your brand new campaign, Google calculates a provisional Quality Score for each of your keywords based on how the keywords you choose have performed in the past when used by other advertisers and how relevant your ad is to those keywords.

The right thing to do therefore when setting up a new campaign is to divide your keywords into small ad groups of 10 or less closely related keywords. Each ad group should trigger at least one relevant ad that includes within it the most popular keyword in the ad group, ideally in the title and in the first line of the text.

The landing page of your ad should also point to the most closely related page of your web site for those keywords and not your home page.

As you continue advertising, after maybe a few days, the Google AdWords Bot will visit your web site and evaluate it. It’s worth remembering that the Bots evaluation is of your entire web site and not just the landing page for your ad.

Therefore your entire web site or at least a significant amount of the content on it needs to be on the general theme of the keywords you’ve selected.

Now, as your account starts to mature, so the Quality Score of your individual keywords will change based on their performance. If the ad your keywords trigger has a high click-through-rate then it’s likely that your Quality Score will rise, poor click-through-rate and it will probably fall.

As a rule-of-thumb you should be aiming for a click-through-rate of at least 1% for all your keywords.

What Is Google Actually Looking For?

The actual formula for calculating a keywords Quality Score is a closely guarded secret. However, we do know what Google looks at when making the calculation.

Your AdWords Quality Score is calculated differently depending on if you’re using Google and the search network or the content network.

For Google and the search network, factors used to calculate Quality Score include:)

• The historical click-through-rate of your keyword and the ad it triggers.
• The historical click-through-rate of your entire account.
• The historical click-through-rate of your domain.
• The quality of your landing page.
• The relevance of the keywords to the ads in your Adgroup.
• The relevance of the keyword and matched ad to the search query.
• Your accounts performance in the region you’re targeting.

For content network, factors include:)

• The ads past performance on the target and similar sites.
• The relevance of your ads and keywords in the ad group to the target site.
• The quality of your landing page.

The best way to improve your keywords’ Quality Scores is by optimizing your account. This entails making sure that each of your ad groups contains descriptive ads all advertising the same product or service, and that each keyword in the ad group closely relates to the ads.

P.S. If you’re having problems optimising your AdWords account then you should go to Key Searches and read about their AdWords Management Services .