Don’t Be A Quality Score Loser

Don’t be a Quality score Loser!

Google define Quality Score as “ an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad.”

PPC managers look at quality score as yet another figure to optimise as part of their ongoing efforts. They build targeted ad groups with their keywords in the ad copy and on landing pages and work their negative keywords to remove all the irrelevant traffic. This process goes on and on and while a high Quality score will help, other high impact stats are overlooked somewhat. Stats such as average cpc, cost per conversion, conversion rate etc are much more important for your bottom line than a high quality score.

Everyone loses, except Google:

There is a vicious cycle that you could become involved in should you choose to optimise for Quality score alone. The following is an example of something we see very often:

Someone sets out a plan for improving their quality scores from a 3 to a 7 and through consistent, determined work making full use of their account stats they achieve their goal and as a result they begin to win more auctions and get more clicks.

A competitor logs in to their own Adwords account and quickly sees they have been losing clicks. To overcome this quickly they increase bids to claw back the lost ground. After the initial shock, they take a few moments to find out why the clicks were being lost, and they discover that average position and CTR had dropped off leading to a slight drop in QS across their keywords. In an attempt to claw this back further, they go on a bit of an optimisation spree, adding new ads, goes to town on the negatives etc. After a while the spree is rewarded with extra clicks but now bids have been raised the clicks are costing more.

Back to the original account manager now; Being on the ball, they now realise they are once again losing clicks. This causes them to go on an optimisation spree of their own, raising bids, stuffing ads with keywords, adding in hundreds of negatives etc.

You see the cycle developing here? The common theme is that both account managers are raising their bids and the only winner in this game is Google. Speak to a rep at Google and they are likely to tell you that although Quality score is important, it is not something you should dedicate all of your time to.

Give your Adwords account some “Go Go Juice”

Quality score is definitely an indicator you should pay attention to, but it is just that, an indicator of how relevant your keywords are. It is simply another number in a long line of metrics that people have whizzing around their heads and it is easy to get caught in the cycle of chasing Quality score and often this is at the expense of account basics.

Instead of trying to play the system take a step back from your account and cast a thorough eye over your keywords and clear out the rubbish. Consider adding in negative keywords to help you do this. Then take a while to analyse your adverts, and try writing adverts that don’t just contain keywords. Focus on the benefits of your business as it is this which appeals to customers more than simply using your keyword 3 times in an advert.

Quality Score doesn’t bring you an ROI

The basics of optimisation don’t really change, you alter keywords, bids, ad copy, landing pages etc. What does change, however is your own focus; instead of focusing on your quality score you should focus your efforts on your ROI. Use your Quality scores as an overall indicator of account health and don’t lose sleep if a few keywords drop from a 6 to a 5. Focusing on winning auctions by standing out from the competition rather than just paying more money will see your Quality scores rise naturally and this will benefit the most important metric, your ROI.