AdWords quality score of landing pages and subdomains popularity
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Hello,
I have an AdWords account whose landing pages point to (i.e.) http://www.domain.com/landing01.php
I've been using this account for ages, it has a good score and history, so I want to keep it.
The first question is: may I use landing pages on different subdomains within the same AdWords account (and in the same root domain)?
I.E. (http://cheese.domain.com/landing01.php and http://wine.domain.com/landing02.php)
2nd question: the www subdomain has good subdomain metrics (authority /trust and, generally, links) while the "cheese" subdomain has not (no backlinks at all).
Do I get any benefit in Adwords (like quality score or other) if I publish my landing pages under a subdomain with better subdomain metrics (or number of links)? Or should I just go with http://cheese.domain.com even it has no authority at all?
Thank you,
DoMiSoL Rossini
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My experience backs up David's opinion. Google doesn't care if your NASA if you're trying to sell cheese & crackers. Since that's not what users are searching for it's not advantageous for Google to show people NASA ads. No one really wants astronaut cheese anyway (wait... is that string cheese? maybe they do)
Auction bids & quality score are based heavily on estimated click through rate, landing page experience, ad relevance, and ad formats. LP Experience can be measured in several ways and Google has always been really keen to keep that information under lock & key. There are theories that they look at time on site, bounce back rate, click through rate, conversion rates, etc. But there's no real answer - except that I am very confident that the specific page's authority is not a heavily weighted factor.
I know you came here for a customized response that's more in depth than static information on the web, but I'm going to direct you to this video anyway because it's seriously informative http://searchengineland.com/google-new-adwords-ad-rank-video-195049
It's legit. I see this happen every day.
There are many theories behind what goes into landing page relevance, but the authority of that page is insignificant. Thousands of companies use PPC specific landing pages that are excluded from robots.txt and have high QS.
I understand that 10% can make a huge difference when you're on the cusp of getting to an 8, 9, or 10, but overall there is more you will be able to do in the account that will impact QS than what you can do with your landing page. (that's not to say that CRO isn't beneficial, but that's CRO, not QSO - quality score optimisation)
I'd rather guide you in the direction of your negative keywords and keyword grouping techniques. the more specific your keywords are to your copy to your landing page the higher quality score you will receive. Note: I said specific. "Cheese" as a head term is not a specific query... "11 in bamboo cheese board" is a very specific query.
Got a little side tracked there. Hope this information is still useful to you!
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Thats hard to answer - i personally dont believe the landing page authority etc plays any roll in bid price. I think campaign performance is all that matters not the domain its on but jasmin may be able to answer better.
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Thank you David and JasmineA, because you've made me think, and I'd like to rephrase my question as it follows:
Do the so called "off-site factors" affect Quality Score in Adwords (which affects Cost Per Click) ?
Will I spend one cent less per click if I'd publish my same landing page under the NASA home page (rather than my ordinary domain site) ?
I know landing pages only play a small part in the QS system but even 10% could make a huge difference.
And yes, JasmineA, I have reasons discouraging me from publishing the landing pages under the www subdomain.
Thank you all again.
DoMiSol Rossini
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As far as Google reports, there is no connection between links a page receives, what domain it's held on, and how the URL is constructed. You can definitely go with cheese.domain in the same campaign if that's where it's located --- I'm sure there are other SEO specific reasons that you wouldn't want to have a subdomain but I'm not that knowledgeable about them
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You can run multiple subdomains from one account using different campaigns
- should not affect you to much just go with http://cheese.domain.com
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