In Google Adwords there is a hidden column. If you've never seen this column, it might be angry. Feeling like your budget is being eaten by some "missing element"? Do you know where your "quality score" is hiding? It could be hanging out in your pocket, burnin' your cash. It might be munchin' down a Benjamin right now... or buyin' a pitcher for the "keyword" column. If you still don't know where your quality score is, it's time to press the secret button and open up the hidden column:

In this column "Great" is better than "OK", and "OK" is better than "Poor" (duh!). You can't do better than Great, unless you're this guy. (awesome)

An OK quality score leads to nearly reasonably costs per click and a poor quality score leads to not nearly at all OK costs per click. Great is somewhere in the.. better than really sucky zone. Right where you want to be.

In conclusion, you want a Great quality score. All the time. This cost per click will scale into more traffic over time which means more money, all disasters averted. Do you know where is your quality score>?! O_O

How?

To increase your quality score for a keyword, the word or phrase you are bidding on should be put in the ad AND on your site as well as a call to action*. Then the keyword will be bolded in the results and draw clicks. The clicks are [algorithmically] more relevant to the search queries involved and Google is happy. It gives you an "I'm happy" discount so you can buy more of its delicious traffic.

On a side note... the users are happy they found what they were looking for.

*A call to action both in the ad and on the landing page is also a way you can help your quality score. By call to action, I mean that your site must request the reader to carry out an action after reading your information. This could mean:

• buying a product
• filling out a form
• opting into a mail list
• calling a phone number
• receiving an estimate
• commenting a post
• voting
• traveling to another portion of a site
• requesting more info
• subscribing to an RSS feed
• downloading a file such as an e-book or shareware
• anything the user can DO while on your site
• ideally it should make you money, and it should most definitely be relevant to the keyword in question

Not Great Just Yet?

If your keyword is in the ad AND on the landing page AND a call to action is offered, you should have a Great quality score. If it is still "OK" then you could try repeating the word or phrase in the ad, on the landing page, or in stronger elements on the page. Title tags, headers, and inbound anchor text will not only help with quality score, but also with organic listings for that word as well. It would be rare to follow this system and receive 'poor' quality scores- contact Google in that case, or take a good look at what a user would see when they land from your ad to your page.

I've written the same thing, and a tad bit more here on my blog. 

Good luck being Great!