In recent months Google AdWords have made considerable improvements to make sure you do the best you can with your ads to achieve a Quality Score.
Clearer notices, guidelines and pointers all now feature prominently at Ad Group level. These recommendations shouldn’t be ignored. You should make every effort to develop your Quality Score if you want to run a successful AdWords campaign.
Here are some pointers for developing Quality Score:
1. Write more than one ad
The AdWords system optimises much more efficiently around more than one text advert. If you are building a new campaign make sure you include several text ads from the outset, and try to vary them to incorporate various USPs.
2. Include target keywords in your ad
If the keywords featured in your Ad Group aren’t included in your ad text copy it’s unlikely you’ll achieve a GREAT Quality Score.
A poor Quality Score is usually due to the creation of large, disorganised Ad Groups with lots of keywords relying on just one generic advert. If you have a huge bunch of keywords in just one Group it’s very likely that they won’t all relate 100% to your ad.
3. Quality landing pages
Your landing page is spidered by the Quality Score robot. So don’t send traffic to a generic page which doesn’t tie in with your ad text.
For example, if you’re talking about a great Christmas promotion then deliver to the Christmas promotion page. Google needs to see the relevant text and subject theme; don’t hide this from Google.
Also, the Quality Score spider uses a calendar so don’t expect Seasonal Ad Groups to perform well out of season.
4. Include a strong call to action in your Ad Text
Google wants to see enticing, relevant adverts for its audience. Do your best to create strong calls to action, some good examples are Enquire Now, Book Today, Buy Online and Apply Now.
5. Testing, testing 1, 2…3
Don’t think just because you’ve established a GREAT Quality Score on your keywords you can leave those ads running forever. Create new ads, similar to those with the best performing CTR’s/conversion rates, to drive costs further down.
It’s good practice to continually add new adverts alongside your best performing. Monitor and compare relative performance and adjust accordingly for even greater success.
Take pride in your AdWords campaign and continue to push AdWords to be more successful for you.
Keep an eye on the competition and regularly cross-reference your performance to last month, last week and previous days. Changes can happen very quickly in AdWords so you need to be on the ball and prepared!