Category: Google Ads
Here’s something that surprises a lot of people new to Google Ads. Two businesses can bid on exactly the same search, in the same town, and one can end up paying noticeably less per click than the other while still appearing higher on the page.
It isn’t luck, and it isn’t who spends the most. Google rewards adverts that it thinks are genuinely useful to the person searching. One of the ways it shows you how it rates your adverts is a number called Quality Score.
What Quality Score is
Quality Score is a rating from 1 to 10 that Google gives each of your keywords. You’ll find it in your Google Ads account, though you may need to add it as a column in your keywords view to see it.
It’s based on three things. Expected click-through rate is how likely Google thinks people are to click your advert when it appears for that keyword. Ad relevance is how closely your advert matches what the person searched for. Landing page experience is how useful and relevant Google thinks the page is that people land on after clicking.
Each of those is rated as above average, average or below average, and together they make up the overall score.
Why it matters for what you pay
Google doesn’t simply give the top spot to whoever bids the most. Each time an advert is eligible to appear, Google looks at how much the advertiser is willing to pay and how good the advert and landing page are likely to be for the searcher, along with a few other things.
The Quality Score number itself isn’t used directly in that calculation. Google is clear that it’s a diagnostic tool, a summary to help you see how you’re doing. But the things it measures, how likely people are to click, how relevant the advert is and how good the landing page is, are exactly the kinds of things that do affect where you appear and what you pay.
In practice, that means a business with relevant adverts and a good landing page can often appear above a competitor who is bidding more, and pay less for the privilege. For a small local business competing against bigger budgets, that’s good news.
How to improve expected click-through rate
The more people click your advert when they see it, the better Google thinks it is.
Write adverts that speak directly to what people are searching for. If someone searches for “emergency electrician Salisbury”, an advert that says “Emergency Electrician In Salisbury” in its headline will usually get more clicks than one that just says “Smith Electrical Services”.
Give people a reason to choose you. Mention what’s genuinely different about your business, whether that’s same day call-outs, fixed prices, years of experience or strong reviews. Use assets such as your phone number, your location and links to specific pages, which make your advert bigger and more useful.
And make sure your adverts only show for relevant searches. If your advert appears for searches that have nothing to do with what you do, people won’t click, and your click-through rate will suffer. Checking the search terms report and adding negative keywords helps with this.
How to improve ad relevance
Ad relevance is about how closely your advert matches the search. The easiest way to improve it is to group your keywords tightly.
If one ad group contains keywords for boiler repairs, bathroom fitting and blocked drains all together, it’s impossible to write one advert that fits all of them well. Splitting them into separate ad groups, each with its own adverts written specifically for that service, makes everything more relevant.
How to improve landing page experience
This is often the part with the most room for improvement, and it’s the part many businesses overlook.
Google wants people who click your advert to land somewhere that gives them what they were looking for. That means a page that’s relevant to the search, easy to use on a phone, quick to load and clear about how to get in touch.
Sending every click to your homepage is one of the most common problems. Someone searching for boiler repairs in Amesbury should land on a page about boiler repairs, ideally one that mentions the area, not a general homepage they have to find their way around.
Don’t chase the number
It’s easy to become fixated on getting every keyword to a 10. Don’t. Quality Score is a useful guide, but it’s not the goal. The goal is calls, enquiries and customers at a cost that makes sense.
Some keywords will always have lower scores, and that’s fine if they bring in good work. Others might score highly and produce nothing. Use Quality Score to spot problems, particularly keywords with a low score and lots of spend, and then fix the underlying cause, whether that’s the advert, the keyword grouping or the landing page.
It’s worth checking every month or so, especially after you’ve made changes.
As we said in our post on getting the most out of your PPC, it’s worth having someone managing your spend who understands that being seen in Google isn’t enough. Relevant adverts and good landing pages are how you get seen for less.
If you’d like help finding out where your Quality Scores are holding you back, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital manage pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area. Give us a call on 01722 320 500.