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What is PPC quality score?

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Table of Contents

  1. An overview
  2. How to improve your PPC quality score
  3. Don’t forget your keywords

PPC (pay per click) advertising is an incredibly effective marketing tool. It allows you to create targeted ads that will be displayed at the top of search engines. It uses specific keywords related to your business.

Each time someone then clicks that ad and is taken to your website, you will pay a small preset amount based on your overall budget.

There are many tools and settings within PPC that can boost the effectiveness of your campaign. One such category is the quality score, and if you’re not too familiar with what this is or how it works, here’s everything you need to know.

An overview

A quality score is a setting found within Google ads and runs on a scale of 1-10. It’s designed to help guide you on how successful your chosen keywords are likely to be.

It’s based on ad relevance, expected-click-through rate and landing page experience.

If you have a high-quality score, then Google has determined your site is of relevance to its user. This is important because Google does not want to link people to irrelevant information, otherwise, it could lose out to competitor search engines.

By ensuring its users find the right information they are searching for, Google remains top of the search engines and you get clicks to your website. Win-win!

How to improve your PPC quality score

It makes sense that if Google gives you a low-quality score on one of your PPC campaigns, you’re going to want to take steps to improve it. After all, you’re paying for the privilege and it could cost you valuable leads!

To improve your PPC quality score, you need to refer back to the 3 categories listed under overview. For example, taking into consideration your landing page experience. If the user clicks on your ad for cashmere sweaters but finds your website only sells polyester sweaters they are instantly being misled.

Add in a slow load time and excessive pop-ups and you’re heading for disaster in the PPC stakes.

Google will deem your website irrelevant and this will reduce your PPC quality score. Google have some excellent information on how PPC quality scores are evaluated so it’s definitely worth a read.

Don’t forget your keywords

Along the same lines of making your website content relevant to your ads, the same can be said for your target audience too. When coming up with keywords you should group them to improve your PPC quality score even further.

Imagine you own a beauty business and you have an ad group called “face products”. Relevant keywords in this field could include moisturisers, exfoliators, cleansers, toners and serums. If you were to place “nail polish” in that group it would lose relevance as it really belongs in a separate group.

By grouping your keywords and keeping them as relevant as possible to the content the ad leads too, this will improve your PPC quality score.

If you are interested in learning more about PPC quality score, check out our guide to the best PPC practices.

If you want to know a little more about PPC give us a call on 0115 971 8908 to speak to our professionals.

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