Google PPC tip #4 – Finding and understanding your quality score

Missed my previous article ‘ Google PPC tip #3 – Targeting your ideal market ‘? Then Click Here to read it .

A quality score is a rating out of 10 that Google uses to rate (estimate!) how relevant your keywords, ad and landing page are to the person who has found your ad.

The higher your quality score, the better. A high quality score means it is relevant which means it will be seen by those looking for what your ad is advertising – targeted traffic! Another benefit of having a high quality score is that you pay slightly less per click than you would having a low quality score. A low quality score pushes up the price of your cost per click.

To find your quality score login to where you manage your Google Adwords account, click your advert and then select the keywords tag. Once you are taken to the page with all your keywords on you will notice a little speech bubble next to them, click on this and a pop up will appear showing you your quality score.

Reasons for a low quality score:
Let me start off by saying what will get you a high quality score using an example. Let’s say you sell red and white striped socks, your key words are red and white striped socks, your advert headline reads red and white striped socks and once the advert is clicked it takes the visitor to a page selling those red and white striped socks…. It doesn’t come much more relevant than that – this will give you the high quality score you need.

Now let’s say you are selling the same pair of red and white striped socks but you use keywords such as black and white polka dot socks – which is irrelevant and then in your advert it mentions red and white striped socks but when you click the advert you get taken to a page selling bright yellow socks with a green heel… this I highly irrelevant and so will give you a lower quality score.

Remember:
Make your keywords, adverts and landing pages highly relevant, the less relevant they are the more your pay for each click and the higher your bounce rate will be… nobody wants to be sent to a page selling yellow socks when they want red and white striped socks.