How to improve your Google Ads Quality Score

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score is Google’s rating of the experience your ads and landing pages provide when people use search terms that match your keywords. Essentially, the higher your Quality Score, the more relevant and useful your ads and landing pages are to people who see them.

You can use Quality Score to diagnose areas where you could improve your ads, landing pages, and choice of keywords.

Improving your Quality Score can help you get more from your ad budget, potentially contributing to better ad placements, increased visibility, and more clicks.

Your Quality Score is represented on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. You can check your Quality Score in the Keywords section of your Google Ads account.

Three factors affect your Quality Score:

Expected click-through rate (CTR): When Google shows your ad, how likely is it that a user will click it?

Ad relevance: Is the ad pertinent to your keywords? Does it make sense for the ad to appear when someone’s search triggers a particular keyword?

Landing page experience: Does the information on the landing page correspond to what the ad is offering and vice versa?

To boost your Quality Score, you may need to improve these factors.

Improving the expected click-through rate (CTR)

The expected CTR is an estimate, based on historical performance and other factors, of how likely it is that someone will click your ad when it appears for one of your chosen keywords. It assumes that the search term will exactly match your preferred keyword and doesn’t take into consideration other factors, such as the type of device the user is on.

The expected CTR of your keywords will show as one of these statuses:

• Average or Above Average — This means there are no significant problems with your keyword’s expected CTR when compared to all other keywords across Google Ads.
  
• Below Average — This means your keyword is expected to underperform in terms of CTR compared to other ads competing for the same keywords. This doesn’t necessarily mean your ad won’t get clicks, but it could be improved.

If you receive a Below Average status, you might want to consider trying the following:

• Editing your ad text to make your offer more compelling to your potential customers.
  
• Ensuring the details in your ad match the intent of your keywords.
  
• Highlighting unique benefits, such as free delivery.
  
• Experimenting with compelling calls to action, using terms such as “buy”, “browse”, “sign up”, or “get a quote”. These should connect closely with your landing page.

Imagine you own an online store selling socks, and your chosen keywords include the following: “socks with polka dots”, “polka-dotted socks”, “decorative socks”, “fashion socks”, and “colourful socks”. A potential customer searches for “socks with polka dots”, causing your ad to appear.

Here, an appealing ad, with a high CTR, may read:

Bob’s Sock Factory — Decorative Socks Online

Ad — Visit our site today to find socks with polka dots. Learn more!

Explore Bob’s Sock Factory for colourful socks today. Get 50% off!

As well as working on your ad copy, you can also fine-tune your keywords to improve your expected CTR. Consider removing keywords that people use infrequently or adding a wider variety of keywords by running a keyword diagnosis in Keyword Planner.

Improving the relevance of your ad

You can also improve your Quality Score by working on your ad relevance. This refers to how well the messages in your ads match your keywords, indicating how closely your ad reflects the intent behind a user’s search.

Ad relevance is also rated as either Average, Above Average, or Below Average.

Bearing the keywords for Bob’s Sock Factory in mind, an ad judged to be Below Average may say:

Bob’s Sock Factory

Ad — Shop at our store today to find things to put on your feet

This ad isn’t as relevant as it could be, because it doesn’t incorporate any of the keywords you’re bidding on. To improve the relevance of this ad, simply reword it to add them in.

Improving the landing page experience

When you’re looking to improve the Quality Score of your keywords, you should compare them to the copy, or words, on your chosen landing page, as well as the landing page’s overall user experience.

Here are some important questions to ask yourself:

• How useful is your landing page to someone who clicks on the ad?
• Is your landing page well organised?
• Does your landing page have text that relates to someone’s search terms?
• Is your landing page clear in its directions?

Returning to the example of Bob’s Sock Factory, we can consider one of the improved ads from above:

Bob’s Sock Factory

Ad — Visit our site today to find socks with polka dots. Learn more!

Imagine someone searches for “socks with polka dots”, looks at your ad, and clicks it — only to be redirected to a landing page showcasing striped socks and plain white socks. If the page doesn’t match this person’s search term, it’s not useful to them.

Alternatively, someone could click on your ad, which matches their search term, but be bombarded with pop-ups or the page takes too long to load. These factors will likely affect their user experience and cause them to exit your landing page.

With this in mind, make sure your landing page is well organised and has everything your potential customer needs. You’ll want it to include helpful information, related links, a clear view of a shopping basket (if applicable), and contact information.

Grouping your keywords to improve Quality Score

When you set up your ads and keywords, you’ll create ad groups for them to sit in.

It’s a good idea to use multiple ad groups instead of housing all your keywords in a single ad group. Group your keywords into similar categories, then create ads that are relevant to each category. For example:

Ad group: socks
Socks
Socks with polka dots
Polka-dotted socks
Decorative socks
Fashion socks
Colourful socks

Ad group: hosiery
Hosiery
Nylons
Pantyhose
Control-top pantyhose
Tights
Knee-high nylons

Ad group: other foot care
Foot care
Shoe insoles
Blister care
Foot plasters
Memory-foam insoles
Shoelaces

Improving your Quality Score can help you to do more with your ad budget. By tweaking your ads and landing pages, you can make your ads more relevant to users and more likely to appear prominently on Search — leading to more site traffic and, ultimately, driving higher conversion volumes.