What Is My Quality Score and How Do I Improve It?

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Do you know what your website’s Quality Score is? 

Every marketer should, given how important Quality Score is in regards to pay per click (PPC) advertising. Improving your Quality Score is one effective way to get more bang for your buck with your PPC strategy and efforts. Yet while many marketers understand the basics of Google Ads and Facebook Ads, as well as the essentials of PPC advertising, they may not be as comfortable with website quality scores.

In this blog post, we explain what a Quality Score is, as well as how to improve and leverage it for PPC success. 

Understanding Quality Scores

Very simply, Google describes Quality Score as “an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.” 

These factors — quality of ads, keywords, and landing pages — are among those used at auction to decide whether an ad will show on a page in response to a user’s search query. So while Quality Score itself is not a factor at auction, improving your Quality Score can make it more likely users will see your ads. 

Quality Score encompasses a range of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. While Google is mum on the exact formula, it’s believed the top factor affecting Quality Score is expected click-through-rate (CTR) on ads. In other words, whenever someone clicks on your ad, this tells Google that your ads are relevant and helpful to users. As a result, Google will give you higher ad rankings and lower ad costs. 

That’s right: This means that the better you are at creating useful ads that compel people to click, the less you’ll pay for ads and the more people will see them. Understanding this virtuous cycle can pay off big for your company!

How do I find my Quality Score?

You can find your Quality Score in your Google Ads account. Go to the “Campaigns” tab, select the “Keywords” tab, and then select “Modify” in the “Columns” drop-down menu.

Improving Quality Scores

If you’re disappointed by the score you find, here are some ways to improve your website’s Quality Score.

Optimize Your Landing Pages

Dig into the analytics on your landing pages. Are your pages converting leads as you intend them to? How are people interacting with them? Follow landing page best practices to create pages that are useful and compelling to your visitors. 

Make sure your landing page contains the same search term that brought your visitor to the page in the first place. Nothing is as disorienting as clicking an ad for one thing and arriving at a landing page that is selling a completely different service or product. 

Write Clean, High-Quality Ad Copy

Google only gives you 270 characters to write your ad. It takes serious skill to make something cohesive, compelling, and easy to understand in only 270 characters. Take another look at your ads — are they as sharp and eye-catching as they could be?

Use keywords that match the user’s search query, and be as specific as possible. For example, advertising “women’s activewear” is stronger than advertising a more generic “women’s clothing” — and “women’s yoga pants” is even better.  

Ads should always include a call to action, like “Shop now” or “Get a quote today.” Without a call to action, your ads are unlikely to spur any conversions. 

A/B Test Your Ads and Landing Pages

A/B testing is a marketer’s best friend, and ads and landing pages are no exception. Google has an inbuilt A/B testing feature so you can test your newly sharpened ad copy and determine what works best for your ad groups. 

You can test everything from the colors on your landing pages (yes, different colors can impact conversion rates) to font size to the length of copy. Small changes can make a big difference when it comes to conversions.

Improve Your Site Speed

If your site’s load time is three seconds longer than the regional average, Google considers it to be slow; and this can negatively affect your Quality Score. Unoptimized images, unclean code, too many ads, and inadequate web hosting can all contribute to slow site speeds. 

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool identifies issues that are slowing down your website, and even shows you how to fix them. It’s a great starting point for improving your site speed. 

If you don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to improving your Quality Score, consider partnering with RelationEdge. Our digital marketing team can help you improve not only your Quality Score but also your website’s SEO rankings, conversion rate, and more. Contact us today.