Google Adwords Important points

Quality Score: Definition

Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

·         You can see your Quality Score (Quality Score is reported on a 1-10 scale and its components (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience) in your keywords’ “Status” column.

·         The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the user, the more likely it is that you'll see higher Quality Scores.

how to improve quality score

Clickthrough rate (CTR): Definition

A ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. Clickthrough rate (CTR) can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

·         CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown: clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.

·         Each of your ads and keywords have their own CTRs that you can see listed in your account.

·         A high CTR is a good indication that users find your ads helpful and relevant. CTR also contributes to your keyword's expected CTR, which is a component of Ad Rank. Note that a good CTR is relative to what you're advertising and on which networks.

·         You can use CTR to gauge which ads and keywords are successful for you and which need to be improved. The more your keywords and ads relate to each other and to your business, the more likely a user is to click on your ad after searching on your keyword phrase.

About ad relevance

Ad relevance measures how closely related your keyword is to your ads.

There are three possible statuses your keywords can have:

1.     Above average

2.     Average

3.     Below average

Having an "average" or "above average" status means that there are no major problems with this keyword's ad relevance when compared to all other keywords across AdWords.

A "below average" status means that your ad or keyword may not be specific enough or that your ad group may cover too many topics. Try creating tightly-themed ad groups by making sure that your ads are closely related to a smaller group of keywords.

Use this status to help identify keywords that might not be relevant enough to your ads to perform well.

Expected clickthrough rate: Definition

A keyword status that measures how likely it is that your ads will get clicked when shown for that keyword, irrespective of your ad's position, extensions, and other ad formats that may affect the prominence and visibility of your ads.

This status predicts whether your keyword is likely to lead to a click on your ads. AdWords takes into account how well your keyword has performed in the past, based on your ad's position. The expected clickthrough rate (CTR) that AdWords provides for a keyword in your account is an estimate based on the assumption that the search term will match that keyword exactly. At auction time (when someone's search terms triggers one of your ads), AdWords calculates a more accurate expected CTR based on the search terms, type of device, and other auction-time factors

There are three possible statuses you can get: above average, average, or below average.

·         Having an "average" or "above average" status means that there are no major problems with this keyword's expected clickthrough rate when compared to all other keywords across AdWords.

·         A "below average" status means that you might want to consider changing your ad text so that it's more closely related to your top keywords.

·         Use this status to help identify keywords that might not be relevant enough to perform well.

·         This expected clickthrough rate is a prediction, so it's different from the actual clickthrough rates shown in the "CTR" column of your account. Unlike the "CTR" column, this status considers how the keyword performs both within your account and across all other advertisers' accounts. This status has also been adjusted to eliminate the influence of ad position and other factors that affect prominence and visibility, such as extensions.

·         It's possible for a keyword to have a high Quality Score and low expected clickthrough rate (or vice versa) because AdWords looks at a number of different quality factors when determining Quality Score. Even if your overall Quality Score is high, looking at the individual factors can help you identify potential areas for improvement.

·         Paused keywords will retain whatever scores they had when they were last active. Therefore, it may not be useful to look at these scores over time. We encourage advertisers to focus on active keywords when looking at their Quality Score sub-metrics, since these scores will be constantly updated.

Landing page experience: Definition

A measure that AdWords uses to estimate how relevant and useful your website's landing page will be to people who click your ad. Landing pages with higher ratings are usually well organized and have text that relates to a person's search terms.

The landing page experience status describes whether your landing page is likely to provide a good experience to customers who click your ad and land on your website. You can use this status to help identify landing pages that might be hurting your chances of making conversions like sales or sign-ups. You should make sure your landing page is clear and useful to customers, and that is related to your keyword and what customers are searching for. All these factors can play a role in determining your landing page experience status.

Your keywords can have one of three statuses: above average, average, or below average.

·         An "average" or "above average" status means that there are no major problems with this keyword's landing page experience when compared to all other keywords across AdWords.

·         A "below average" status means that you might want to consider some changes to improve your website's landing page.

Understanding landing page experience

Landing page experience is AdWords’ measure of how well your website gives people what they’re looking for when they click your ad. Your landing page is the URL people arrive at after they click your ad, and AdWords analyzes it through a combination of automated systems and human evaluation. The experience you offer affects your Ad Rank and therefore your CPC and position in the ad auction. Your ads may show less often (or not at all) if they point to websites that offer a poor user experience.

This article explains how you can improve your landing page experience. For specific instructions on how to optimize your website for mobile, see Principles of mobile site design and Create an effective mobile site.

Before you begin

Landing page experience is different from policy violations. If your site violates AdWords policy, you receive no landing page experience rating at all, and your ads don’t run.

Instructions

You can improve your landing page experience by taking any or all of the following steps:

1.     Offer relevant, useful and original content

·         Make sure your landing page is directly relevant to your ad text and keyword.

·         Be specific when the user wants a particular thing: If someone clicks on an ad for a sports car, they shouldn’t wind up on a general “all car models and makes” page

·         Be general when the user wants options: If someone’s looking to compare digital cameras, they probably don’t want to land on a specific model’s page

·         Provide useful information on your landing page about whatever you're advertising.

·         Try to offer useful features or content that are unique to your site.

2.     Promote transparency and foster trustworthiness on your site

·         Openly share information about your business and clearly state what your business does

·         Explain your products or services before asking visitors to fill out forms

·         Make it easy for visitors to find your contact information

·         If you request personal information from customers, make it clear why you're asking for it and what you'll do with it

·         Distinguish sponsored links, like ads, from the rest of your website’s content

3.     Make mobile and computer navigation easy

·         Organize and design your page well, so people don’t have to hunt around for information.

·         Make it quick and easy for people to order the product mentioned in your ad.

·         Don’t annoy customers with pop-ups or other features that interfere with their navigation of your site.

·         Help customers quickly find what they’re looking for by prioritizing the content that's visible above-the-fold

4.     Decrease your landing page loading time

·         Make sure your landing page loads quickly once someone clicks on your ad, whether on a computer or mobile device.

·         Consider turning your landing page into an Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP).

5.     Make your site fast

·         See how your site scores on mobile speed, and get quick fixes to improve it. Test your site.

·         See our guide to Create an effective mobile site.

 

About ad position and Ad Rank

Ad position is the order in which your ad shows up on a page. For example, an ad position of "1" means that your ad has the highest position on the page relative to the other ads of the same type. It doesn't necessarily mean that your ad is above the search results. If there are no ads above the search results, then it means that your ad is the first ad shown beneath search results. In general, it's good to have your ad appear higher on a page because it's likely that more customers will see your ad.

Ads can appear on the top or bottom of a search results page. You can learn about how your ads are stacking up by checking your average position.

Before you begin

Keep in mind that “average position” is a metric best suited for checking your progress on the Search Network. Because of the diversity of websites on the Display Network, average position may be less useful for optimizing for display performance.

How ad position is determined

The ad auction is how Google decides which ads to show and how they're positioned.  AdWords calculates Ad Rank for every ad in the auction. Ad Rank determines your ad position and whether your ads are eligible to show at all. Generally speaking, the ad with the highest Ad Rank gets to show in the top position and the ad with the second-highest Ad Rank gets to show in the second position (assuming the ads clear the relevant thresholds), and so on. At a high level, think of Ad Rank as having five factors:

1. Your bid - When you set your bid, you're telling AdWords the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a click on your ad. How much you actually end up paying is often less, and you can change your bid at any time.
2. The quality of your ads and landing page - AdWords also looks at how relevant and useful your ad and the website it links to are to the person who'll see it. Our assessment of the quality of your ad is summarized in your Quality Score, which you can monitor—and work to improve—in your AdWords account.
3. The Ad Rank thresholds - To help ensure high quality ads, we set minimum thresholds that an ad must achieve to show in a particular ad position.
4. The context of the person’s search - With the ad auction, context matters. When calculating Ad Rank, we look at the search terms the person has entered, the person’s location at the time of the search, the type of device they’re using (e.g., mobile or desktop), the time of the search, the nature of the search terms, other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes.
5. The expected impact from your ad extensions and other ad formats - When you create your ad, you have the option to add additional information to your ad, such as a phone number, or more links to specific pages on your site. These are called ad extensions. AdWords estimates how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact your ad's performance.

Example

Assume five advertisers are competing for a maximum of four ad positions above search results on the Google search results page. The respective Ad Rank of each of the advertisers is, say, 80, 50, 30, 10, and 5.

If the minimum Ad Rank necessary to show above the search results is, say, 40, only the first two advertisers (with Ad Ranks of 80 and 50) exceed the minimum and show above the search results.

If the minimum Ad Rank necessary to show below the search results is 8, then two of the three remaining advertisers (with Ad Ranks of 30 and 10) will show beneath the search results. The advertiser with an Ad Rank of 5 didn’t meet the minimum Ad Rank and so won’t show at all.

For the purposes of the Average Position metric, the advertiser with an Ad Rank of 80 (in the first position above search results) will get position 1, the advertiser with Ad Rank of 50 (in the second position above search results) will get position 2, the advertiser with an Ad Rank of 30 (in the first position below search results) will get position 3, and the advertiser with an Ad Rank of 10 (in the second position below search results) will get position 4. “Position” therefore refers to an advertiser’s order in the auction, not a specific location on the search results page. So even though two of the four available ad positions above search results (the positions immediately below the advertisers with Ad Ranks of 80 and 50) were left empty, the next two advertisers in the ranking (the advertisers with Ad Ranks of 30 and 10) receive positions 3 and 4 for purposes of Average Position.

To improve your ad position, you can:

• Increase your bid
• Improve the quality of your ads and landing page experience

Better ads mean better Ad Rank

Every time someone does a search that triggers an ad that competes in an auction, we calculate an Ad Rank. This calculation incorporates your bid and auction-time measurements of expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, among other factors. To determine the auction-time quality components, we look at a number of different factors. By improving the following factors you can help improve the quality components of your Ad Rank:

• Your ad's expected clickthrough rate: This is based in part on your ad's historical clicks and impressions (adjusting for factors such as ad position, extensions, and other formats that may have affected the visibility of an ad that someone previously clicked)
• Your ad’s relevance to the search: How relevant your ad is to what a person searches for
• The quality of your landing page: How relevant, transparent, and easy-to-navigate your page is

Why ad quality matters

The quality components of Ad Rank are used in several different ways and can affect the following things:

• Ad auction eligibility: Our measures of ad quality help determine the Ad Rank thresholds for your ad, and therefore whether your ad is qualified to appear at all.
• Your actual cost-per-click (CPC): Higher quality ads can often lead to lower CPCs. That means you pay less per click when your ads are higher quality.
• Ad position: Higher quality ads often lead to higher ad positions, meaning they can show up higher on the page.
• Eligibility for ad extensions and other ad formats: Ad Rank determines whether or not your ad is eligible to be displayed with ad extensions and other ad formats, such as sitelinks.

In a nutshell, higher quality ads typically lead to lower costs, better ad positions, and more advertising success. The AdWords system works best for everybody—advertisers, customers, publishers, and Google—when the ads we show are relevant, closely matching what customers are looking for

Check   Formula for Googel Ad Rank

Improve your ad quality

In AdWords, the best performing ads are usually the ones that people find the most relevant. Think about how you search and surf the web: You tend to ignore things you aren't interested in and focus on those that are relevant to you. If you're craving some chocolate chip cookies right now, you'll probably ignore that ad about browser cookies (unless you're also craving those)!

If you know what your customers are looking for, you can focus on making your campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing page more relevant to them, making customers more likely to click your ads.

Below are several things you can do to make your ads more relevant to your customers.

1. Create very specific ad groups

Each ad group within your campaign should focus on a single product or service so that your ads appear more relevant to customers. Your cookie-loving customer is more likely to click an ad about cookies than a generic ad about food. Relevance tends to lead to higher quality ads, and being specific is one way to become more relevant.

Example

If your baked goods shop sells different types of cookie packages, think about creating ad groups for each of those different cookie packages, like one ad group for your holiday cookie package, and another ad group for your birthday cookie package.

2. Choose your keywords carefully

Include specific keywords that directly relate to the specific theme of your ad group and landing page. It's often more effective to use keywords that are two or three words long instead of just single words.

Example

If you're selling cookie packages, some keywords you might consider are "cookie gift package" or "cookie gift basket." Generic keywords like "cookie" or "gift" probably aren't effective because they're way too general.

Need help thinking of more keywords? Try using Keyword Planner to help you think of additional keywords that you might want to add to your list.

3. Include keywords in your ad text

Include your keywords in your ad text (especially in your ad's headline) to show people that your ad is directly relevant to their search. When people see their search terms in your ad text, it shows them that your ad is probably relevant to what they're searching for.

Example

If you're trying to sell a cookie gift package, and you have a keyword that says "cookie gift package," your ad text should also say "cookie gift package."

4. Create simple, enticing ads

What makes your product or service stand out from the competition? Highlight these important differences in your ad. Do you offer free shipping? Do you have certain items on sale? Be sure to describe any unique features or promotions that you offer.

5. Use a strong call-to-action

Your ad text should have a strong call-to-action. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and helps them understand what they can do once they reach your landing page. Here are some sample call-to-action words: Buy, Sell, Order, Browse, Find, Sign up, Try, Get a Quote.

6. Test out multiple ads

Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what's most effective for your advertising goals. Our system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often. Over time, you might see that certain ads will perform better than others, showing you which ad text is more effective.

7. Regularly review your campaign performance

Test and tweak your campaigns to get the results you want. Review your ad performance to help figure out the best ways to achieve your goals. As you watch your ads over time, you might notice changes to your clickthrough rate or conversion rate. For example, if you find that customers aren't responding to a particular call-to-action in your ad text, remove that ad and try something else. It's all about experimenting!

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