Optimize Ad Campaigns Using Adwords' Keyword Quality Score

If you're a PPC (point-per-click) ad practitioner, creating new ad campaigns using Google's Adwords tool is as easy as ABC.  All it takes is loading your ad's keywords using the Adwords Editor and creating ad texts based on them.  After reviewing the ads and setting bids, your PPC ad campaign is ready for launch.  Each keyword will automatically gain a Quality Score that will affect how well your PPC ad campaign fares from then on.

Quality Score for Ad Relevance

Adwords' Quality Score for keywords measures the relevance of a PPC ad to search queries made by users online.  For example, a user who searches for "ppc" as the keyword will be given a list of search results of PPC web sites.  When the user clicks on any of them, any Google ads on the page will be about PPC or similar keywords.  The ads in the page entice users, who are interested in the subject in the first place, to click on them to know more about similar topics.  When users see the PPC ads on the page, or click on them, the advertising was successful, and the keyword used to advertise is rated accordingly.

The Quality Score for keywords is an important metric in Google's advertising system, benefiting users, advertisers, and website publishers alike.  Without the Quality Score, ad relevancy is not assured, and displayed ads will not match the needs of users, leading to a failure in advertising.

Quality Score Calculations

Every time there is an ad keyword matched to a search query, the Quality Score for the keyword is calculated, because this means the keyword can bring about an ad.  Quality score is calculated using the CTR of click-through rate, which is the quantity of clicks that the ad receives compared with the number of times that the ad was shown (or what is known as “impression”).  Well-targeted keywords have higher CTRs than general keywords, as well as a well-crafted PPC campaign.  A high CTR leads to a high Quality Score.

A keyword's initial Quality Score is derived from how well it performed for other advertisers in the past.  Adwords has a monitoring system in place that tracks each keyword's performance in previous PPC ads.  A base score is then derived and is the keyword's initial Quality Score for new PPC ads.  How it performs from then on will either lower or raise the Quality Score.

Leveraging Quality Score for PPC Campaigns

Since a high Quality Score means that the keyword performed effectively for other advertisers in the past, Google places a premium on advertising cost for such keywords.  Knowing that a group of keywords for your new PPC campaign has low Quality Scores should tell you whether to redesign the campaign or not.  A poor Quality Score means past advertisers did not do well with the keywords, but a high Quality Score also means that many advertisers are launching their own PPC campaigns with these keywords, offering stiff competition.

Deciding on improving a keyword's Quality Score means optimizing the Adwords campaign account, setting up descriptive ads and ad groups, and aiming for closely related keywords for all groups.  A sound PPC campaign strategy to optimize Quality Score is also aided by the Keyword Analysis tool that can suggest ad optimization in landing pages, ad copies, and other performance enhancement activities.