One of the most misunderstood concepts by new users of Google AdWords is the Quality Score formula. This post aims to clarify what Quality Score is, how it affects your campaign, what factors are used to formulate your Quality Score, and how you can optimise your account to achieve a “Great” Quality Score.

Quality Score is a system used by AdWords to determine how relevant your keywords and ad copy are to the search query. It is assigned on a keyword level basis; however, it can also affect your overall ad group and campaign performance.

Why care about Quality Score? Google ranks each keyword on a three-level basis - Great, Okay, and Poor. These rankings are used in conjunction with your set CPC bid to formulate an overall score known as Ad Rank. This means that an ad with a "Great" Quality Score has to pay less than an ad with a "Poor" Quality score to rank for a comparative position. In addition, an ad with a "Great" Quality Score will normally have a lower minimum CPC bid then one with a "Poor" score. In real world terms this may be the difference between having to bid $5 per click and $0.05 per click.

Now that you understand what Quality Score is and why it's important, let'[s look at the factors that make up Quality Score and how to optimise your campaign to achieve a "Great" Quality Score. This list is based on the work of Brad Geddes, a great resource for anyone working with PPC advertising. This post aims to build on his work by including some extra tips and advice. 

Before we begin, you can find the Quality Score column in your AdWords account by clicking the “Customize Columns” button at the top of your keyword list. JustFred did a YOUmoz post on it that included some pictures.

1. Ad Group Structure  The number one problem I see with poor performing AdWords accounts is bad Ad Group structure. What normally happens is that the person responsible for creating the campaign obtains a long list of keywords from somewhere like the AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool and places them all into one or two Ad Groups. I admit that on my first AdWords account I did exactly that.

How do you set up an Ad Group correctly? You need to tightly group your keywords thematically. It's better to have one hundred Ad Groups with ten keywords per Ad Group than to have ten Ad Groups with one hundred keywords per Ad Group. Why? Because by having smaller Ad Groups you can focus similarly themed keyword together,  leading to a better Quality Score. Okay, time for an example. I run an online fruit and vegetable company. Here is how a bad Ad Group would look:

Ad Group: Produce

Apples

Oranges

Mandarins

Carrots

Peas

Corn

Now let’s look at what an optimised version would look like:

Ad Group: Apples

Red Apples

Green Apples

Fresh Apples

Apples

Buy Apples

And so on. The question I ask myself when setting up Ad Groups is can I split the keywords into smaller, more relevant groups? In the above example we started out with a mix of fruit and vegetable-related keywords all together. I could have split them into fruit related keywords in one Ad Group and vegetables in another Ad Group; however, as you saw, we could split them even further into individual fruit/vegetable Ad Groups.

By grouping your keywords together thematically it allows you to write more targeted and relevant ads, leading me onto my next Quality Score factor.

2. Ad Copy

Now that you've got small, focussed Ad Groups, you can write ads that appeal in a targeted manner to the user's query. Writing an ad is part art, part science, and whilst there are fundamentals you should follow whenever creating an ad, you may find that your experience differs from the status quo. 

My formula for writing an ad is to include the keyword at least once in the ad copy and on average twice. In some cases, I've even resorted to putting the keyword three times in the ad copy but I consider that the maximum limit and you have to start getting creative when you only have 130 characters per ad to achieve it. Let's look at what a good ad would look like for the above fruit example.

Buy Fresh Apples

Fresh, Crispy Apples Shipped

To Your Door. Eat Healthy Today!

www.example.com/apples/

There are other factors when writing an ad that you also need to account for, like including calls-to-action and product differentiation, but that is for another post. As you can see, with the above example we've mentioned the keyword three times; once in the headline, once in the description line, and once in the display URL. The upside to mentioning the keyword in the ad copy is that like with organic results, Google bolds the keyword if it matches up with the search query, increasing visibility and CTR.

You can't include every keyword in your ad copy from the Ad Group, but if you have properly structured your Ad Group you should be able to include the "main theme keyword;" in this case, Apples. It has been pointed out to by Brad Geddes that the "dynamic insertion" feature in Google AdWords doesn't count as including the keyword in the ad copy, so you need to include it in other parts of your ad.

One last point before we move onto the next factor is the display URL. I've used the URL www.example.com/apples/ and whilst this was partly an effort to include the keyword in the ad copy I believe that from a user expectation standpoint, when a user clicks on the ad, the resulting destination URL should match it (hint: strip any tracking code from the URL).

3. Landing Page

Like with its organic results, Google uses a bot to check the relevancy of your landing pages and factors this into your Quality Score. If you are sending your PPC ads to your home page then you need to stop reading this article and create some landing pages. If I'm searching for apples, the ad says you sell apples, and I click on the ad only to get delivered to your generic fruit and vegetable home page, I might stick around or I might click the back button and find someone who delivers me directly to their apples page. You've just cost yourself the sale and the cost of the click.

Back to quality score - what makes a good landing page? You now have small Ad Groups that reflect a single theme, right? Well your landing page should reflect the theme of the keywords and Ad Group. If my Ad Group theme is apples, the landing page should be about apples. Now that you've got your theme, what else needs to be done? I recommend following the words of the Great One. If you follow Rand's tactical SEO advice on your landing page combined with other best practices, you're 99% of the way there. A great way to test your landing page to see if Google agrees with your targeted theme is to use AdWords Keyword Tool and enter in your URL to see what keywords are returned.

Lastly, one thing that has proven controversial with regards to landing pages is loading time of the page. I myself haven't seen this play a big factor in Quality Score; however, if your site is constantly offline or slow to load then this may come into play. Even without it being a Quality Score factor, it makes sense to rectify the issue because you will pay for the click even if the site is offline, or the user will simply click back if your page fails to load in an appropriate time.

4. Google.com Click Through Rate For Your Ads

It is important to clarify this factor - CTR is only measured on Google.com, not the Google.com search or content network.

It is also further broken down into the following factors:

a) All Time History vs. Most Recent History - Google places more emphasis on the latter; however, the former still does play a part and is why it's sometimes best to start anew.

b) CTR is based on Position - If your ad is showing up at 5th, you will naturally receive less clicks then the ad showing in 1st position. Google knows this and takes it into account.

c) CTR is Keyword Predicted - An ambiguous term like apples has varied query intent and could be about the fruit or the technology company. Google tries to predict whether a term would have a high, average, or low CTR.

Brad Geddes also points out that it is only based on exact match CTR so that expanded broad match results aren't taken into account by Google. This is good news for people starting a campaign, as it often pays to use broad match to discover keywords that you initially missed in your keyword research.

How do you increase your CTR? The best answer is to be relevant. If you have well-written ads that include the keyword, that are served to the correct market and have a unique selling proposition (free shipping, cheapest price etc.), you shouldn't have a problem.

5. Account Quality Score

The account quality score is the sum of all your individual quality scores. What does this mean? If you have underperforming keywords in your account it pays to get rid of them. That doesn’t mean delete them straight away though.

When I have underperforming keywords I like to split them off from the successful keywords into another Ad Group. This then gives me a chance to try different things like adjusting ad copy, trying different landing pages, and even bidding for higher or lower positions. You may find that some small changes will make it profitable again and the upside is that it gives you coverage if a potential customer enters that term.

That sums up the five main factors that account for Quality Score in Google AdWords. In addition to the factors listed above, there are some smaller, external factors like IP targeting, search intent, and ad scheduling that, in my experience, you do not need to worry about if you address the five factors listed here. If you want do further reading on PPC and Quality Score, I recommend reading the following resources.

http://adwords.google.com/support/ - The Official Google Adwords Support page

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ - The Official Google Adwords Learning Center

http://www.ewhisper.net - Brad Geddes' Blog about all things PPC