Google PPC Quality Score (adventures in)
-
We have one keyword that brings our site the most visitors. This keyword is the brand name we carry. We have several years of tracking it in Adwords. For some extended time, this keyword [exact match] has averaged 19 cents per click, 2.7 average position, 4.5% click through, and a quality score of 7/10.
We wanted more clicks. We could think of what was needed to increase the quality score. Sure, we could change the meta tag title and the adwords title to be the same as the single word keyword, but this would be less informative. We decided to keep these titles as phrases which include the brand name.
First change we made: we increased the bid. After all, it was profitable for the two ads above us, right? We increased our bid from .50 to $1.50. Effect? Average position increased to 2.3 from 2.7. Click through increased from 4.5% to 4.9%. Cost per click went from .19 to .51. The incremental cost for each sale was......well really really high.....this didn't work. (oh, we rank #2 organically. Our organic CTR dropped from 3.2% to 2.9% with this change as well)
Reversed back to where we were and decided to focus on the quality score. We realized that the keyword was part of an add group with about 20 other keywords. This word was important.....lets put it in it's own ad group. We then made an "exact" copy of the ad and started up a new ad group. Paused the old keyword. We very quickly realized that the quality score on this "same" keyword was now 4/10. That was odd....lets give it a few days......quality score drops to 3/10 and no longer qualifies for first page. What was different we wondered? AH! We capitalized the first letter of the word. Changing this took the quality score up to 6/10 instantly. hmmm, we thought capitalization didn't matter? Seems it did. We now wait to see where the quality score goes. Saga to continue....
-
A follow up and update to my adwords adventure.
I the end, it seems capitalization did not matter. The quality score of our keyword settled over those first few days at 3/10. In trying to figure out more about quality score I found two incredible resources which answered many questions.
First was this blog post
http://www.epiphanysearch.co.uk/blog/decoding-the-quality-score-2/
This has a graph for each QS and charts position vs CTR. This data gave me bench marks to understand what I needed to achieve with CTR. "Broadbeach Media" replied to this post and reinforced the idea that CTR was the leading indicator of relevance.
I also read all of the blog posts at
http://www.clickequations.com/blog/
This was an invaluable resource. So many time I spend hours doing searches look for answers to questions; Then I find a gem like this blog that answers so many questions it kept me up at night reading.
I didn't give up on my keyword. I kept my bid high. MY CPC was at 450% of where I started. I split test my add like a madman. Originally couldn't imagine a better ad than I had. I made 6 different versions of my ad title. I used a statistical significance spreadsheet (wish I could tell you where I got it, but the author didn't provide that information on the spreadsheet. There are several of these available online).
As I gain significance each day, I was able to eliminate ads. Just with title change, my best performer was able to get a 5.6% CTR (from 4.5% before). Through out this process I watched the average position to make sure I had comparable data. (I manipulated my bid to maintain a constant average position.) Then I started testing a few change in the body of the ad copy. Goldmine! My best performer was now hitting 7.9%. QS was increasing slowly over the 3 weeks. (QS is now where I was pre-test QS=7). A few days ago, I let loose on the bid. My average CPC is now the same as it was pre-test. My average position is now 1.2 (from 2.7). CTR is between 8% and 10%. If my QS goes up again, I will be paying less per click than originally. total clicks for PPC have just about doubled!
-
Hey Eugene,
I actually had to contact Adwords myself asking for advice on how to gain a better quality score. I received quite a lengthy response that I will paste into here, I hope it can be of use.
- WHAT EXACTLY DO WE MEAN BY RELEVANCY OF A KEYWORD:
RELEVANCY OF A KEYWORD IS THE AVERAGE PERFORMANCE OF THE KEYWORD ACROSS ALL ACCOUNTS:
We look at the average CTR of the keyword in question across all accounts. CTR is used to determine the "relevance" that you see in the ads diagnostic tool. Why? The logic is that if people have clicked ads for this keyword, they must find it relevant. Otherwise, they wouldn't click. If a KW (keyword) has a bad overall CTR, it will be hard for the client to get a good QS number unless they have extremely good individual performance. Relevance, in this case, is NOT simply having the keyword on your landing page. This is a common misconception about relevance.
Relevancy is about how much users find it appropriate. In order words, how many users click on an advertiser's ad when they search for that keyword.
After thorough analysis of your account with our specialists, I have the following findings and recommendations for you:
1. CTR OF THE KEYWORD
As you can see from above points while defining the “Keyword Relevance” for a keyword we not only try to provide you with information on how “closely related” the keyword, ad and webpage are to each other/your service (defined by points 2,3 and 4) but we also try to provide signals about how good this keyword has been (in terms of performance) as a marketing keyword on google.com in general.
Please note, this keyword, I will like to confirm, has historically not performed that well in general on google.com and hence the same is reflected in the Quality Score of this keyword. However as we get more impressions and are able to keep a high CTR for this keyword in our account, this keyword’s performance in our account will start playing more significant role in terms of defining the Quality Score of this keyword and the same will improve.
2. EXACT MATCH CTR FOR KEYWORD IS LOW:
As you can see from above points (point 2) that the exact match CTR of the keyword also plays a significant role in determining the Quality Score.
I will like to inform you that besides the performance (read CTR) it is also the quantum of performance (read number of impressions) that impacts quality Score. The higher is the number of impressions you have the bigger role the CTR of that keyword will play in defining the Quality Score for that keyword. In this case, we can see that the keyword has received around 62 exact match impressions for the past 30 days, compared to around 1900 monthly exact match queries for this term, hence the CTR of the keyword is playing an important role here.
NOTE: It works both ways: that is to say a bad CTR with high impressions will impact Quality Score that badly and also a good CTR with high impressions will impact the Quality that well.
As this keyword receives around 0% of the traffic for this keyword in a month, the CTR at keyword level is not impacting the Quality Score of this keyword. However as the impressions will increase & if the CTR at keyword level is high it will have +ve impact on Quality Score.
As your Exact Match Impressions would increase and the number of clicks increases the Exact Match CTR would improve and will start impacting the quality score of the keyword positively.
3. GENERIC KEYWORD:
With broad matches, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren't in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
Can Google Shopping Ads Lower Ranking due to Bounce?
I am noticing Google Shopping Ads are showing up for really irrelevant keywords on some of my products. This quite predictably causes a high bounce rate when a user comes from these ads. There is very little control over what Google Ads seems to decide are relevant keywords from what I can see. Only control is by viewing search terms and setting as negative keywords, but his doesn't help much. Negative keywords are often ignored or they come up with some other really irrelevant new keyword. Seems this high bounce rate could hurt ranking? Any experiences shared with Google Shopping ads appreciated!
Paid Search Marketing | | Chris6611 -
Keyword Quality Score is 8/10
Hi, I have few keywords in my Adwords search campaign with quality score 8/10. When I checked everything is above average like 1>Ad relevance 2> Landing Page Experience 3> Expected click through rate.to If everything is above average what to improve to get quality score 10/10?? I'm using most of the ad extension Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Alick3000 -
Seeking Critique on PPC Campaign Gameplan
Background: We're a home service business with potential for recurring clients. In the past, I've run PPC campaigns for a much larger company, and was profitable, but the business model was vastly different. The campaign also took place during their busy season, allowing flexibility I won't receive here. Campaign Details: AdWords only SERPs only (not partner network) Desktop users only Data Available: Lots of past data was incomplete, prompting my best estimates and judgment calls. For past leads data, I'm using Google as lead source (organic + local pack rankings), generated specifically from our quote form. Since our quote form doesn't render on Mobile/Tablet, I omitted those visits from our Analytics data, and only target Desktop in the campaign. I wound up with the following statistics: Organic (any web search), Desktop visitors who viewed our quote form page: Number of overall pageviews Number of overall leads generated from our quote form Number of overall leads which converted to sales And for our sales/numbers end of things: % our clients choose targeted package Revenue of initial sale on that package Profit generated from sale on that package Using these numbers, I calculated the % of clickers likely to bounce, complete the form, convert to clients, etc. Using our sales records, I calculated revenue/profit expected from each. And with that, I calculated the highest CPC to break even (unacceptable, obviously), as well as the projected ROI from lower, more reasonable CPCs. Notes: We're a home service business. Not all homes are created equal. Through data, I found our clients average home size and the average estimate for that home. Due to incomplete records, I can't know which Google _clients _are specific to our quote form. Some likely called through the local pack or manually dialed and said "Google" if our staff asked. To combat this, I found the % of Google _leads _who completed the quote form vs. phone call, email and applied it to clients for a reliable estimate (our system removes the quote form identifier upon lead to client conversion). I'm not factoring in the % of clients who become recurring customers as I don't have this data. Given that it's much higher than 0%, I think this allows a LOT of breathing room on my estimates. Many of our clients have stayed with us for years. If only a small number convert to long-term status, the current ROI shoots WAY up. Similar to above, I'm also not factoring in the % of clients who don't choose the initial package, but instead choose a lesser package. Again, I think this provides breathing room. Any PPC campaign will have a plethora of variables, especially intangible issues (damages, refunds, etc). I feel I have the important things down, but I'm far from an expert. I'd love to receive any advice or things I'm overlooking. Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | kirmeliux1 -
How to find a good PPC firm
Hi guys, I'm completely new to PPC. I want to hire a firm to help drive PPC traffic to credit card landing pages. Our starting budget is limited ($2,000/month for everything) but can grow to about $5,000 if we see results. My questions are: Where can I find a list of good PPC firms that fits my vertical (credit cards) and budget? What are the key questions I should ask a PPC firm before I hire them? Is there a "Beginner's Guide to PPC" type of whitepaper, ebook, article, or course I can take to educate myself? Thanks in advance!
Paid Search Marketing | | Brand_Psychic0 -
Discrepancy between google analytics referrals and 3rd party stats
I have a client who pays to be listed in a industry directory. It is now time for renewal and the directory has come to my client with their statistics, which they claim has sent over 400 visits to my clients site. Having looked in to google analytics, over the same period of time, google analytics has registered 2 visits. Could the directory's stats be true? Or is google analytics 100% correct? Any help or advice in this area would be useful, as my client is concerned if they don't renew they will lose some traffic and leads. Cheers.
Paid Search Marketing | | xposurecreative0 -
Index or Noindex PPC Landing Pages?
Hi all, We have thousands of PPC landing pages for our products. Usually, these pages are very similar and may differ only slightly for the keyword in question. The landing pages are sitting in a sub-domain of our site. From SEO perspective, assuming we don't want to get hit by Panda, Penguin and other animals Google stuffed into its ranking algorithm...Is it a good idea not to index these landing pages at all (i.e. add meta robots - noindex, nofollow to these pages)? What say you? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | ShivaS0 -
Do you take Seo and ppc management on competitor sites?
I would love to hear what everyone thinks : I wanted to know what people do about seo and ppc when the keywords and industries overlap.
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidKonigsberg0