How to improve Google Ads Quality Score

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.