Learn how to improve Google Ads Quality Score for higher rankings, lower search marketing costs & more customer leads.
Google Ads Quality Score Definition
Google Ads Quality Score is a measure of the quality & relevance of your Google Ad, keywords & landing page on a scale of 1 to 10. From the above definition it is clear that the 3 main factors that affect your Quality Score are:
- Keywords
- Ad text
- Landing page
Adwords uses your Quality Score to determine the position of your ads appear on the search engine results page (ad rank) & how much you will pay for each action (cost per click or impression). In short anything that improves the relevance of your keywords, ad text & landing page will increase your Google Ad quality score.
Improve your keywords
- Select appropriate keywords for your campaign during keyword research (Buyer persona research, Analytics & Keyword Planner)
- Smaller & more targeted ad groups (5-10 keywords per ad group)
- Negative keywords to eliminate irrelevant searches from your campaign
- Use long-tail keywords to attract customers down the buyers journey
- Branded keywords
- Keyword match types (broad, phrase & exact)
- Analyse the Search Query Report to get an idea of ad relevance
- Increase your expected Click-Through Rate (CTR) : Estimate of how likely someone will click on your ad when it appears for one of your keywords
Ad relevance improvement
- Ad copy focused on a single product or service
- Use Ad extensions to highlight important information
- Eye catching ad text (highlight benefits & features)
- Prominent Call To Action (CTA)
- A/B test your ad text to measure effectiveness
- Speak to a specific buyer persona in the ad (Perfect for small businesses)
- Use keywords in ad text
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion for more relevant ads (Use with care)
How to improve landing page experience
- Relevant & original content
- Easy navigation
- Keywords in landing page url
- Responsive landing page (desktop & various mobile devices)
- Fast page loading speed (Use Google Page Speeds Insights)
- Clearly displayed contact information to establish trust
- Balanced keyword density on the landing page (meta, headers, title, alt & paragraphs)
- Landing page for each ad group
- Secure website (SSL certificate)
- Crawlable text
Impact of historical performance on Google Ads Quality Score
Users vote on the quality of your ads with their clicks.
Interesting facts about the Google Ads Quality Score
- New campaigns get a Quality Score rating of 6
- Quality Score rating of 5 is the benchmark
- High Quality Score rating ads (7-10) get a CPC discount
- Low Quality Score rating ads (1-4) get a CPC premium
- Increasing your Quality Score rating by 1 point decreases your cost per conversion by 13-16%
- The Quality Score is based on average past performance
- Null Quality Score (new keywords that lack performance data & old keywords with limited exact match impressions or not enough recent traffic)
- Quality Score is not used at auction time to determine Ad Rank.
At the end of the day a higher quality score is worth the effort, it will help grow your business & save you money.
Further reading
- How to improve keyword relevance
- Improve ad relevance
- How to improve landing page experience
- Things that don’t impact your Ads Quality Score
- Why you see different Quality Scores for the same keyword
- Example of a High Quality Score ad in action
- How to add the Quality Score column to your Keywords report
- Create pivot tables for Quality Scores in Excel
- How to view your Ads Quality Score
- Why Quality Score is important
- How Google Calculates Quality Score