Maybe you’ve been flirting with Google AdWords in the past. Taking little stabs in the dark here and there, maybe you’ve even had some luck. But do you understand all the factors that influence the ad performance? A PPC management company is essentially tasked with making sure that all these factors are dialled up to 11 and get you the best performing campaign.
So while we take the leg work out of building a good AdWords program, we also help optimise it within an inch of its life. There are no wasted keywords here.
What is a Quality Score?
One thing that seems to stump a lot of part-time AdWords enthusiasts is quality score. I mean, who do Google think they are, rating my ads out of 10?! How do they know?!
And the answer is much like everything with Google, based not on real eyeballs but on a computer program.
But ignore how they find they score. Instead, ask why they offer one. Quality score essentially says how relevant the ad is. 1 means it really sucks and is irrelevant, and 10 says this ad is the real deal.
Why is it Important?
It’s actually a hugely important figure as it impacts how much money is spent on each ad. A quality score of 5 is a benchmark, anything below that has an artificially increased cost per click, while anything about that actually saves you money.
It also helps where your ad is positioned. If you want to be number one on paid search terms, your quality score has to be top notch. The lower the quality score, the lower your paid search result will rank, potentially pushing you to the bottom of the first page or even onto the second!
Target Keyword Distribution Plays a Factor
Back to what influences quality score. Because the quality score is inherently designed on the ad and the ad group that it belongs to. Let’s say you’re targeting 50 keywords. There is no way that all 50 of those keywords can be represented by one ad. And realistically, it shouldn’t, because Google will definitely not like that (essentially thinking it’s just spam).
But what is the right number? We strongly recommend you avoid creating 50 different ads for 50 different keywords. Why? It’s too much work, both in set up and ongoing maintenance. Plus, there has to be some overlap between keywords.
Say Newpath WEB is targeting “PPC Melbourne”, “Melbourne PPC Management”, and “PPC management company Melbourne”. All three are essentially the same thing, so we’d create one ad targeting all three (and much more, because the keyword volumes on that topic are gigantic!)
I don’t want to give you a hard and fast rule, but anything up to 20 keywords per ad is acceptable
Anything more than that, and quality score goes down.
Ad Copy is Also Critical
The next factor of quality scores is the ad itself. What are you trying to tell people? Does it reflect the general vibe that your keywords are giving off? Because if you’re targeting web design, but selling digital agency, Google isn’t going to see that connection. Do yourself a favour and write relevantly.
Google current ad format allows for two headlines (30 characters each) and a body description (80 characters). There are some rules about no punctuation here and no spamming there, but typically you want to talk about your keywords.
Let’s go back to our example. Our keywords are “PPC Melbourne”, “Melbourne PPC Management”, and “PPC management company Melbourne”. A good example of an ad would be:
Why is this an example of a decent ad? It contains direct mentions of PPC, Melbourne, Management and Company, all four individual words targeted by our ad. The quality score of this ad would be quite strong already.
Referring Link and Landing Page Need to be Correct
Finally, remember that each ad has a destination URL shared as a part of it. Take a look back at the previous example. The two headlines in blue are the link, yes. But the green URL underneath is where it goes if you click on it.
The content on this page is remarkably important.
Why is that? Think about your user for a second. Say they’ve searched PPC Melbourne and lo and behold Newpath WEB’s ad appears first up. Now, maybe the user didn’t read the link, maybe they did, but if they land on the home page, that doesn’t really talk about PPC. Do you think they want to have to hunt down what they want to look at?
Nope. They don’t
That means that what you choose to link from your ad to your website is utterly critical to the quality score. Google will negatively impact your ad’s quality if the link doesn’t go to the relevant page.
Even if it is the most relevant page you offer, again remember that Google is a robot, not a human, and so while you might be talking about pay per click this, and AdWords that, if you don’t explicitly mention PPC, you’re not going to have a good quality score.
This is the difficult part, because AdWords specialists aren’t copywriters and can’t rewrite landing pages. We can offer suggestions to make things better, sure. But there is always more to be done, and that’s where the client’s responsibility comes into play.
Quality Score is a Gateway to PPC Success
Any good PPC management company will tell you how critical quality score is in determining the success of your AdWords campaign. How you use keywords, what your ad actually is and where it goes all play a huge factor in the performance of each ad and go towards giving you a positive quality score. Visit our PPC services page for more information, or give us a call on (03) 8605 4896 to find out how we can help your business!
