How to Increase Your Quality Score in Google AdWords

After many "Google Slaps" heard around the world over the last couple of years, advertisers have learned Google is serious about relevance. Quality Score became the buzz word the later end of 2006 after many advertisers noticed a minimum bid requirement in their accounts. These minimum bid requirements were sometimes upwards of $5 or $10. Advertisers were angry, but with that little, but powerful statement "increase bid or ad quality," Google had thrown it back in their court. Many were forced to pay more attention than they had before. Organizing adgroups, match keywords to ads, adding lots of negative keywords were all good practices in the past and now they were being enforced. Below are a couple of tips on How to Increase Your Quality Score in Google AdWords. For a new account, you are guilty until proven innocent and must prove your ad can compete with the already established bidders. This is why you have to be more conscious of what you do early on so you are not constantly on an uphill battle. What is relevance? Relevance is not the only factor. User behavior and click-through rate. How to Start with a Strong Quality Score Click through rate (CTR) and willingness to bid high with new campaigns until your CTR is proven are two of the biggest factors -- besides relevancy and Google's own estimation of a keyword's likelihood to receive a high enough click through. On some keywords you are at an disadvantage from the beginning, not based on anything you've done, only based on Google's 10 years of analyzing users, or seven years of AdWords. They want to make money and if you're bidding on keywords they have seen a historically low CTR from all ads, they may deem those words higher risk for not getting paid while taking up real estate. PPC is the New SEO Similar to traditional SEO, consistency and relevance in all areas is the key. So you have your keyword phrase you are bidding on, now these should all match to a certain extent. -Keyword in ad headline -At least two keywords bolded somewhere in the copy of the ad. -Have keyword in destination URL (will show you an trick so every destination URL will be relevant) -Have your keyword in the display URL Landing Page -Keyword in H1 -Keyword in meta title -Keyword somewhere in copy Trust factors that help Quality Score -Privacy Policy -Terms of Service How to Make Every Display URL Relevant in Google's Eyes Here's a tip to make every Display URL be relevant. Instead of a slash ( / ) before an interior URL which may be limited if you don't truly have a page that matches, instead use a question mark ( ? ). Like this: Destination URL: http://www.yourcompany.com?keyword Display URL: www.YourCompany.com?Keyword Even if you go to Yahoo.com?stinks, it will still go to Yahoo!'s site. Try it. You can put a question mark after any url and put any word after and you are still sent to the same place. This is how you can make any display URL relevant, since it's also in your destination URL it will always match. I've also found it helps if sending people to a form on your site and the form shows you the link from which the visitor came. It gives you another easy way to see which adgroups are performing. Of course there are many other ways to tag your ads, I just like that it can be seen quickly throughout the day without having to logon to Google Analytics when I get a form in. Of course this is just one method of making your URL relevant, which you shouldn't have to force it too hard if your landing page truly matches what you are advertising. These are not all hard and fast rules. Having your keyword too often could seem a little contrived and although your ad may be "highly relevant," it may not convert if you do not weed out the non buyers. You should always test in case it doesn't work for your audience specifically or is seen as the advertiser did a find and replace (aka, the old Ebay ads "Buy God on Ebay").