by AdWords has so many myths related to quality score.
Users often fall prey to these myths and lose their valuable money by conducting quality score in a wrong way.
The Quality score plays an important place in Google Adwords. Google rewards advertiser which acquire the high-quality score.
Quality score indicated the relevancy of an ad to the queries placed in the search engine.
Relevancy matters at every step.
Through quality score, Google ensures that the ads users are seeing have relevancy with their search queries.
A good quality score is triggered by an array of factors and together it increases the ROI.
It is true that you need to increase your quality score at following levels:
Account Level
It shows the performance of all the campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads of account. Basically, it is a combined report of all the keywords, ads, and ad groups.
When your account gets clogged with low-performing keywords, the account level Quality Score falls drastically.
You can read more about the account level quality score at our previous blog post.
Though the reflection of improvement cannot happen overnight because of Low performing and lower quality score history, it will take a few moments.
Ad Group
The ad group is a combination of ads that share the same set of keywords. In order to get the overall good quality score, each ad group should perform well.
Each well-performing ad group contributes developing the overall quality score.
Checking quality score at this level helps you to scrutinize where your campaign is lacking. You need to restructure your ads to improve the score.
Keyword Level
The performance at keyword level is calculated how much keywords are relevant to the search queries.
Keywords can get scores between 1 and 10. Score 1 indicates poor score and 10 is the top score.
Landing Page
Relevance, originality of content, transparency, and navigability of landing page are pillars of a good landing page.
Google simply wants the websites to become more user-friendly. The landing page that shows these qualities earns more quality score.
This score is also important for advertisers. A good landing page ensures better profit and ROI.
Ad-Level Quality Score
Each ad running in your ad group will have a different quality score.
Sometimes, ads with high CTR often fail to bring conversion. It hampers return on investment or ROI.
In that case, delete or pause low performing ads and create a new ad text. You can do A/B testing of ads to improve the quality score.
[bctt tweet=”Higher be Quality Score, lesser you need to pay for CPC click.” username=”adstriangle”]
Importance of Quality Score
The quality score plays a vital role in increasing Ad rank that in turn reduces the cost of the advertisement in Google. Google does it to encourage a good performer.
Ad rank is basically the position of the ad in the search engine. It is decided by the performance of the relevancy of the key factors that increase quality score.
Ad rank is determined by multiplying the CPC bid with the quality score of the respective section. Google also consider ad extensions which calculating ad rank.
Ad rank for Google search network is:-
CPC Bid x Quality Score
You can read more about how to improve quality score at our previous blog post.
Myths Regarding Quality Score Improvement
Pop Ups Improve Quality Score
This is one of the worst kind myths that seriously hampers your ad campaign.
When a pop appears that is very hard to remove from the screen creates irks in the viewer’s mind. Usually, in most cases, they leave the site immediately.
70% users in 2014 said that use of irrelevant popup annoy them. Usually, popup disrupts reading and compels them to make the departure.
Technically popup helps to grow email list that works in aid of marketing.
If the user cannot find a way to get rid the popup then Google takes it seriously. It may result in blocking of the website permanently.
If your target is building a website that would make a long-term relationship with the visitors then shed those irritating pop-up.
With time popup is gradually losing its relevance.
Bid to the Top Position
By being in the top position or number 1 in the search results your ad is making the most money for Google. So Google will reward you with the high-quality score.
Now, this very myth needs to be busted immediately. Actually, it is the only half-side of truth.
Your goal is achieving higher conversion rate. Your click through rate, average ad position, impression share, quality score has no influence on conversion rate.
It is a dependent variable. It is controlled by some elements which may affect its performance but cannot make it happen.
Factors like ad extension i.e. site links, call extension and location also contribute to attracting quality clicks.
If ads fail to garner expected CTR it may harm your Quality score. And quality score directly affects ad rank.
Getting top position will only be useful for you if your target is branding. Generating expected ROI is the ultimate goal of placing PPC ad and you do not need top position for that.
After earning good CTR, your target should be improving your position to increase quality score.
In AdWords, there is no stopping. You have to keep improving to stay relevant in the search engine.
Invest More and Google will Show Your Ads More
This is entirely a false assumption that Google promotes only high spenders. It actually goes against the integrity of the Google’s auctions.
This misconception about Google’s policy was quite in practice in 2005 and unfortunately still is in some places.
Google has created this system in order to create a level playing field for both big and small business houses.
Small account spenders can’t spend at par with big houses. Again they do not get the amount of traffic that big houses receive.
But they are treated equally in auction platform. When both of their ads show up, they can compete with each other with their website relevance.
Increasing CPC bid or daily budget does not help much in increasing quality score. It would be foolish thinking that Google will give them more preference.
Google wants websites to be more user-friendly and relevant. Google have put definite guidelines.
The target of the advertiser should be gaining more by investing less.
If a big house decides to increase the total amount of investment to $1000 where required average CPC spend per day is between $50-200 then the company is making a costly mistake.
At the end of the day, you cannot stretch your daily budget to $1000000.
Quality Score Suffers When Ads or Keywords are Paused
When low performing ads or keywords are paused, you’re actually giving your campaign a breather.
AdWords counts your quality score by calculating the overall performance of the campaign. It also counts the quality score of each ad and ad group also.
A low performer will drag down your quality score when counted in average.
Pausing a non-performer is always good because then it does not contribute to your campaign and score calculation too.
It is better to block it from putting your quality score down.
Putting AdSense on the Site
Google’s AdSense is used by website publishers. It falls under Google display network platform.
By using AdSense publishers display content related targeted ads on their website. For this, they only have to add little amount of HTML code to their site.
When a visitor clicks on these ads publisher earns money. It is the easiest way for bloggers and webmasters to earning money from their site.
On clicking on these ads, Google also gets money. The myth regarding Google AdSense goes this way- Google wants to earn money. If ads on your site are getting clicked, Google would want more people to come and click them.
In this connection, to incur more clicks Google will give the good quality score to your website in order to earn more money.
This is a horrible idea and still practiced in many places. As stated earlier Google wants its AdWords enlisted websites to conform to certain rules and regulations.
It does not permit publishers to clog the website with multiple ads. It disrupts viewing and liable to punishment even to the extent of blocking.
Display and Search Quality Score Affect Each Other
Display and search quality scores are different to each other. They do not actually affect each other.
The factors that determine the quality score in display network are entirely different from the factors involved in search network. It is virtually not possible for each of them to bring change in other.
The structure and behaviors of the display network are different from search network.
Old AdWords Accounts Score More
AdWords prefers old accounts and gives the better quality score, is nothing but a misleading fact.
It is often seen that old AdWords accounts are on sale. It is not because they are high performing accounts; rather they were opened long back in 2006 or 2007.
Like wine, with the passing time the price increases. Old accounts have high gross sales and that is why the selling price increases.
This myth too has lost its life. Do not ever buy old accounts. Its antiquity won’t bring you desired quality score.
[bctt tweet=”AdWords prefers old accounts and gives a better quality score, is nothing but a misleading fact.” username=”adstriangle”]
Bringing Change to Your Account Would Lower Quality Score
AdWords always advocates for advertisers involvement. It requires going through experiments to improve quality score and competitive CPC bids.
During mid-2000, there was the common conception that bringing change to the account would cost you losing account history and quality score.
Well, currently this myth does not stand anywhere. It has lost its relevance long ago.
A High Page Rank is Must for Good Quality Score
High page rank does not work in aid of getting the high-quality score.
Many companies still run behind obtaining high page rank through off page optimization and creating back links.
All these jobs are done to put the website in position above organically placed sites.
Google wants its visitors to have relevant search results that come organically in the search results.
Optimization is done in such a manner so that Google does not get any hint. Google does not support such practices and only promotes organic and relevant search results.
If Google finds that a website is acquiring high page rank using some illegal tricks, it immediately bans both agency and website.
Optimization should be done slowly and steadily. Quality score has nothing to do with page rank.
Use of DKI Increases Quality Score
In AdWords dynamic keyword insertion, keywords are dynamically inserted in ads based on search query. It makes the ad more relevant.
But DKI increases quality score is a partial truth. The quality score you see in your account is not used during the auction.
It is kind of a mash up data indicating the overall health of keywords and quality score. Arguably it can be said that during real time auction having DKI increases the quality score to some extent.
Actually, the keywords inserted by DKI are not the exact search query placed by the visitor. It is actually the keyword that you used in the ad group made it appear in search results.
If your keywords length is more than 25 characters long then it won’t show up in the headline. But sometimes Google does show 28-29 character long headlines.
The fact of the matter is the use of DKI increases your quality score, in reality, CTR is increased.
This increase is not because of DKI.
DKI can lower your quality score if ad loses relevance. So DKI increases quality score is nothing but a myth.
Quality Score Increases if Every Match Type is Used
Using all kinds of match types in all your ad groups is absolutely not necessary. It does not aid in your quality score.
Having exact match, phrase match, and broad match just gives a different quality score in each ad group.
The quality score increases due to some random factor or ad difference.
You can consider it as having better transparency in terms of analyzing which match type is working better.
[bctt tweet=”Use keywords match type strategically. Avoid implementing all the match types in a single ad group. ” username=”adstriangle”]
Use keywords match type strategically. Avoid implementing all the match types in a single ad group.
Change Keyword Casing to Re-Enable it
In earlier times (2004-2006), if your keywords receive below 0.5% CTR, Google used to take them off from your ad.
You were not able to get it again. But when written in a different casing, Google used to re-enable its usage.
Such tricks do not work these days. Google has grown faster and has learned from its shortcomings.
Remove Your Affiliate URLs to Getting Higher Quality Score
The priority of Google is providing relevant search to the searcher. Google bans sites and advertisers who perform poorly.
Basically, if your site or advertisement create any hindrance between its searchers and search queries, then Google will slash your existence.
The conception that Google hates affiliates is not true. Affiliates are those who promote others. If your affiliation does not hamper Google’s basic practice and works as the answer to search queries then Google will allow you to exist.
On the whole, the affiliate should work in harmony with Google.
In affiliate marketing, affiliate website receives a part of the profit from each sale that takes place from the affiliation program.
Google is not bothered about whether you are an affiliate or not until you are not negatively affecting its ecosystem.
[bctt tweet=”If your affiliation does not hamper Google’s basic practice then Google will allow you to exist. ” username=”adstriangle”]
Putting Keywords in Meta Tags Improves Quality Score
The Meta tag is an important SEO part of HTML code of any web page. These tags are not visible but help search engines to know about your website content.
Most of the people believe that one should put effective keywords in Meta tags to optimize Quality Score in Search Engine marketing.
If the question is- does keywords in meta tags help to improve quality score in PPC? The answer is big ‘NO”.
You may include Meta tags for SEO. Including keywords in Meta Tags has gradually lost its importance for SEO.
However, when you are dealing with PPC then you can ignore it because Keywords in Meta tags have nothing to do with the quality score.
Quality score is largely depending on CTR. Higher CTR means good quality score.
Meta tags are included in HTML code and that is why they are components of your landing page.
For PPC marketing, your Landing page components must be relevant to your keywords other than using keywords in landing page meta tags.
Landing pages with the clear call to actions and relevant contents increase CTR and thus reflects good QS.
Deleting Keywords with Lower QS Improves Overall QS
In general, theory deleting lower performing keywords or poor QS keywords contributes to improving the overall quality score. However, this is not the best or needed solution. Deleting keywords blindly may harm your campaign performance.
However, this is not the best or needed solution.
By deleting:
- Keywords blindly may harm your campaign performance. The fact is not so easy as you think.
- Elements cannot erase the historical elements at all and that his why you cannot change the Quality Score history.
- Keywords are actually reflected directly on your advertising interface.
You may delete them projecting future historical report as accumulating more data would suppress the negative impacts.
But it will take more times than you can imagine. And the historical reports of those lower QS keywords never disappears completely.
Eliminating keywords is not enough to improve quality score. You need to identify reasons, why they are performing poorly.
You may create a separate ad group with those poor performing keywords in order to optimize them without hurting your account quality score.
Wrapping Up
There are different myths attached with AdWords quality score. Many companies suffer a hefty portion of their budget by practicing them. Quality score reduces advertising price and that is why it is a lucrative proposition for advertisers and PPC experts.