Some of the most prevalent questions I come across in Paid Search marketing are, What are the factors that go into Quality Score and What can I do to improve my keyword Quality Score. This question is asked by clients, brand managers, co-workers, and Paid Search marketers themselves. But to understand how to improve Quality Score, you first need to understand what it is.

Quality Score as defined by Google, is a measurement of a keyword’s relevance to its ad text and to a given search query – this influences the keyword’s eligibility to display an ad and the position of that ad. The reason this metric is so important is because this helps ensure that users find what they are looking for through the use of Google AdWords ads, which will provide a better chance for your advertising success.

Quality Score also factors into the way your ads are positioned and how your keywords are priced. The higher the Quality Score of your keyword, the lower you will have to pay per click and it will increase your ads position. Remember, to receive the top position on a Google search, Quality Score is more heavily weighted than your bid!

7 Factors about Quality Score (Not in Order of Importance):

• Account History
• Historical CTR of the Exact match keyword
• Relevance of the keyword & the ad compared to the search query
• Quality of the landing page
• Relevance of the keyword to the ads in the ad group
• Historical CTR of the display URL’s in the ad group
• Account performance in the geographical region where the ad is being shown

Some of this we already know, and some of this is probably the first time you are hearing this. But even after building out your campaigns following the above factors, I’m sure we all will still find some keywords with low Quality Scores and ask ourselves Why Is My Quality Score Still Low?

• Poor Landing Page Quality – Most of us run into this problem if we do not build the websites on our own, so it can be challenging for Marketing agencies to control this factor. We can advise on some things, but in the end, it is the clients responsibility to handle this one. What we can control is where we land the keyword, making sure the keyword is relevant to the landing page. For example, you would not land someone searching for a football jersey on a page that specializes in football helmets. You should land them on the football jersey page or Google will penalize you.
• Low Click Through Rate – Google sets the standard of a “well performing” keyword at ~1% CTR. So to create a higher CTR, you can add negative keywords, alter your ad text, delete the underperfomers, try using exact match, & finally using keyword insertion.
• Poor Historical Keyword Performance – The solution to this is…Time! If a strong CTR (1% or better) is maintained over a fair volume of impressions, Google will deem that keyword relevant and will improve your keyword Quality Score
• Recent Changes Made – Making changes to your account such as adding keywords, changing your ads, or changing landing pages will prompt the Google system to start over and re-evaluate your Quality Scores based on these changes. Again, when you make changes you will have to give Google sufficient time to evaluate the keywords relevancy and enough time to generate impressions to calculate a CTR.
• Not Enough Impressions or Clicks – If the keyword has not been triggered enough over a given time frame, the keyword probably doesn’t have search demand. Even if this keyword has a CTR of 1%, it will be given a low Quality Score. So if it is critical to your campaign, try raising the bid to get better visibility. If not important, I would recommend deleting/pausing the keywords because it will bring down your blended Quality Score of the account.

According to Google (Key Learnings):

• Quality Score will heavily influence the price you pay for a click and the position your ad achieves.
• CTR is the #1 factor in determining the Quality Score on the Search Network
• It can take at least 3-4 weeks for your account to build up significant data, so if you make changes, it’s best to relay this message from the start to eliminate discussions on why things aren’t working after a week.