Google Ads Quality Score: What Is It and How Can You Use It to Improve Your Campaigns?

Quality score is an important metric you need to pay attention to when running Google Ads campaigns. It's a metric that measures how well your ads perform and can help you identify areas where you need to improve.

This blog post will explain what quality score is and how you can use it to improve your Google ad campaigns!

1. What is quality score, and why is it important?
2. Where can you find your quality score?
3. What factors influence quality score?
4. How can you improve your quality score?
   

What is quality score, and why is it important?

As mentioned above, the Google Ads quality score is a metric that Google uses to measure the quality of your ads. It then decides how likely they are to show them in response to queries and how much you will pay.

Each keyword is given a quality score out of 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. And Sometimes, there will not be a score as there is insufficient data to determine.

Quality score is important because it can save you money on your Google advertising campaigns.

How?

Typically, the higher your quality score, the less you pay per click (CPC).

Equally, the lower your score, the more cost per click you will pay. This low score indicates (to Google) that you provide a poor experience to people searching for what you do, so the high CPC should encourage improvements.  

Where can you find your quality score?

Step One: Go to your keywords tab within your Google ads platform

Step two: You'll see a list of your keywords on the right-hand side with data tables. Take a look at your columns. If the quality score columns are not there, you can select them using the columns button:

Step three: You will get all of the column options at the keyword level. There will be one called "Quality Score".

Select the options you want and save them, so they are there the next time you come back.

What factors influence quality score?

Google Ads quality score measures how well your ads target the right audience and provide a good user experience.

Factors that influence quality score include:

• the relevance of your keywords
• the quality of your ads and landing pages
• and the user's interaction with your ads

Let's look at this in more detail.

the relevance of your keywords

The keywords you are bidding on need to be relevant to the person performing the search, the ad copy you use and the landing page you send them to. 

For example:

Let's say you are bidding on the keyword "Travel Insurance with Gadget Cover", but you mention something completely unrelated in your ad copy. This is likely to give you a low score based on irrelevancy. 

the quality of your ads and landing pages

Keeping the above in mind, it's also essential to consider if your ad copy's compelling. Suppose you're competing against many other advertisers. In that case, you want to make sure you have an excellent reason for the searcher to click on your ad.

Also, once they click on your ad, what does your landing page (the web page you are sending them to) say?

Does the content on the landing page closely match what the person is searching for? And how is the website performing in general? Google looks at loading time and how mobile-friendly it is to factor in your score.   

and the user's interaction with your ads

This is closely related to how compelling the ad text is. Google will be looking at your historical click-through rate (CTR) to calculate the component of your quality score.

Remember that if you are just starting out advertising on Google, this may take a little time to get factored in as it is based on historical data.

Increasing your quality score can take time, but here are some tips on what you can do to help.  

How can you improve your quality score?

• You can improve your quality score by ensuring that your ads are relevant to users.
  
• This is by using relevant keywords and having a good landing page experience. Not just good copy but great on mobiles and fast loading.
  
• You can also improve your quality score by increasing your click-through rate (CTR). Create more persuasive ad copy that better appeals to searchers.  

Don't forget that the higher your quality score, the less you'll pay per click, and your ad position will be better.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you can see the benefits of understanding quality scores and find out yours.

It can not only save you money with a lower cost per click, but it can get you more traffic and also help increase the rate at which people convert on your website.