Do you know what are the three main factors that determine ad quality? Let’s take a little quiz here and clear it out.
What are the three main factors that determine ad quality?
- Expected CTR (clickthrough rate), max CPC bid, and ad relevance
- Expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience
- Max CPC bid, landing page experience, and ad relevance
- Expected CTR, ad formats, and landing page experience
The ad quality plays a significant role in whether your ad shows on Google search results or not and whether the ad position is secured.
Over the years, Quality Score has influenced how we create ads and landing pages. Best practices at the moment are based on how they affect this metric. Google is constantly changing its ad platform, so it’s essential to consider the Quality Score whether you’re on a budget or not.
What is a Google quality score, how is it determined, how to get better quality Google Ads, and improve low-ranking status? Let’s check it out!
What is a quality score?
The quality score assesses the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages and your overall performance in ad auctions. It is a diagnostic tool designed to tell you how well your ads perform on a scale of 1-10 compared to other advertisers.
A higher Quality Score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and valuable to someone searching for your keyword than other advertisers. Also, the better you are at the quality score, the less Google charges you for ad clicks.
Pro tips: Google Ads Quality Score isn’t an important performance indicator and shouldn’t be optimized or merged with the other data. The Quality Score isn’t an input for the ad auction nor used to determine your ad rank at the time of the auction. It’s a diagnostic tool that you can use to determine how ads for specific keywords affect the user experience.
Auction-specific quality is calculated using click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience to determine ad rank in real-time.
Google Ads quality score: What you need to know
Three factors determine ad quality:
- Expected clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Ad relevance
- Landing page experience
Expected CTR
Your expected CTR is the way Google thinks your keyword will perform. The CTR adjusts once your ad goes live and up for auction (when someone searches on a keyword to see your ad appear in their results).
Possible statuses for the expected CTR that Google will assign you:
- Below Average: Adjust the ad text to better relate to the top keywords.
- Average: Your keyword has no major expected click-through rate problems.
- Above-average: There are no major problems.
How to improve your CTR?
Expected CTR indicates how likely people are to click your ad. To improve your CTR from below-average to average or above status, you should look at your copy of the ad. Is it an intriguing, catchy, but clean copy? Do keywords match ads?
If your Expected CTR is “Below average” or “Average,” try this:
- Edit your ad text to make your offer compelling to your target audience.
- Be more specific in your ad text. Details in your ad should match the intent of your keywords.
- Highlight a unique benefit of your product or service, such as a free trial or shipping.
- Experiment with different calls to action that connect closely with your landing page.
- Create compelling CTAs (calls to action) with words like “Find, Sign up, Try (now), Order, Buy, Sell, Browse, Get a Quote.”
Ad relevance
Ad relevance is how much a keyword is related to your ad.
Target the customer’s actual intent or use case – the person buying the walking shoes at the time will probably also not be interested in the boots, even though you might have a boots category on your site as well.
For example, the “black walking shoes” ad should contain relevant keywords like “walking shoes” and “comfortable shoes”. It shouldn’t contain keywords like “black boots”.
There are three statuses for ad relevance that Google can assign you:
- Below Average (underperforming): Your ad group may contain too many different topics, or your keyword or ad may need to be more specific. Improve the status by creating ad groups with narrow topics.
- Average: Your keyword has no major ad relevance issues compared to other Google Ads keywords.
- Above Average: There are no major problems with the ad relevance of your keyword.
Landing page experience
Google wants you to create unique and exciting websites with a great user experience. Your website has to be super easy to use. Otherwise, it will harm the bouncing rate.
The possible statuses for landing page experience:
- Below Average: You need to improve your landing page.
- Average: There are no significant problems with your landing page.
- Above Average: Your landing page is probably well organized and relevant, with no significant issues with ad relevance.
To improve the status of your landing page, you can explore different areas.
For example, if someone were looking for a “short black dress”, it would be best for the landing page to be a highly filtered selection of only short black dresses.
If your landing page matches a keyword, but your status is still below average, study your site’s user experience. These include website speed, landing page load time, mobile experience, navigation, and ease of use. Are the products easily visible? Is it easy for customers to purchase the product?
Finally, look at the copy and pictures on the page. What information do customers receive? Do they have to scroll to find information, or is it clearly displayed? The fewer actions a visitor needs to take to achieve their search goal, the better the website experience.
Researching and writing keywords can improve writing ads on Google and social media and planning your company’s content.
Keyword research will also give you an insight into what your customer wants. If you know what people are looking for, you will be able to use the right keywords on your website to make it organically appear more in search results.
How to check your Quality Score
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Select Keywords (in the left menu).
- Go to the upper right corner of the table and click the columns icon
- Go to “Modify columns for keywords” and search the Quality Score section. To view the current Quality Score and its component statuses, choose any of the following to add to your statistics table:
- Quality Score
- Landing Page Exp.
- Exp. CTR
- Ad Relevance
To view past Quality Score stats for the reporting period, you’re looking at, choose any of the following metrics:
- Quality Score (history)
- Landing Page Experience (history)
- Ad Relevance (history)
- Exp. CTR. (history)
By segmenting your table by day, you can view daily score changes.
Click Apply.
How to improve the ad quality?
How can you tell if your Google Ads are performing well? There are a few essential aspects and strategies when optimizing and improving your ad quality:
- Create high-quality content that matches the search intent.
- Structure your ad groups. For each product or service, create specific ad groups.
- Make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices.
- If your ad and website are easy to navigate, contain relevant information, and help visitors complete tasks (purchase a product or service), you can expect a better quality score.
- Research your keywords. When conducting keyword research, always keep the user’s intent in mind. Include your keywords in the headline and ad description.
- Test your ads. Ad optimization is an ongoing process. The best ads are usually the result of months of testing and optimizing different parts of the ad.
Develop a strategy for how and when you test your ads and improve them based on the results.
Boost your Google Ads performance
If you want to grow your brand and achieve faster results while improving your reputation with customers, you need to get noticed.
No matter who you want to reach, you can reach them with ad campaigns when they’re online.
Advertising and marketing play a crucial role in the success of a business. Advertising is a fast and effective way to promote your content, acquire new customers, get leads, and increase brand awareness.
At Async Labs, we can help you get your content to the right people at the right time. Contact us and get almost instant results now!