How to Improve an Ad’s Quality Score Using 5 Simple Methods

Knowing how to improve and ad’s quality score on places like Bing and Adwords, can lead to you spending less, getting more clicks and better results.

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I’ve been doing online marketing for over 8 years. The bulk of my profits have come from PPC ads and in most of my campaigns, I’ve had a VERY high quality score (10 in many cases) and a very good CTR (30% in some cases).

I’m going to show you 5 methods I personally utilize when making ads/websites which will definitely help you as well.

These methods will:

• Improve your quality score.
• Lower your CPC (cost-per-click)
• Help improve click through s to your website (CTR).
• Potentially earn you more money.

I’ve been able to do very well with these same tips, such as in this situation where the ad I made had a very high quality score and mixed with other good things, made that campaign a good amount of money (the amount it made).

With quality score, there’s 5 tips to keep in mind:

1. Always make sure the keywords your ad appears under links to a page which actually contains those keywords. 

The first thing people will look for when they hit your page is if the keyword they typed into the search engine appears on your page. Some statistics say that you have about 7-10 seconds to provide enough information your site for the visitor or they will leave. Those first seconds that they are on your site are critical.

If I am looking for a book on dog training, make sure your ad links me directly to your page which contains dog training information, whether it be books, tips, ect…

2. Always make sure the keywords you target are actually written in your ad! 

If you are targeting a keyword like “dog training” and your ad says:

Animal Training Store

We well toys, accesorries for pets.

Dogs, cats & all other animals.

Yourwebsite.com

The ONLY words that will be bolded are training and dogs. Note: If you didn’t already know, whatever keyword you target, if it is in the ad, it will be bolded. Bolded words are more likely to be seen by people and can lead to a higher CTR.

And for anyone who is looking for specific dog training supplies, will unlikely click on your ad. Also your quality score will not be very high because the page is very broad. It talks about animals, not specifically dogs. One last key factor is to capitalize every word in the ad. This gives it more frame and potential to be spotted. Here is a better alternative:

Top Dog Training Supplies

Everything You & Your Dog Need.

Dog Training Has Never Been Easier.

Yourwebsite.com

I guarantee you this ad will get a much higher CTR & much higher quality score. Don’t forget the 1st rule though: make sure the same keywords you are targeting link to a page which contains those keywords. That’s the first thing people will be looking for when they land on your page, followed by relevant images. So in this case, the dog training ad should link to some sort of store where dog training supplies are sold. This is HIGHLY relevant & will get you a very high quality score and low CPC.

3. Keep your adgroups short. 

Though there is no “limit” to how many keywords you can have per adgroup, I often notice so many new advertisers collect a list of dozens if not 100’s of keywords, bunch them all into 1 adgroup and let it run. This is a MAJOR mistake because odds are most of your keywords will not contain the same wording and you will have only 1 ad to try to get them all to bold up when it appears.

It is therefore (for quality score & CTR’s sake) to divide up your adgroups in a way where each group has “similar” words constantly appearing. My rule of thumb is at least 2 and up. Here is an example:

Say this is your keyword list:

Dog training guide
How to train dogs
Train dogs
Dog training books
Dog leashes
Dog toys
Dog and puppy accessories
Chow chow food

Out of that list, take out these keywords:

• Dog training guide
• How to train dogs
• Train Dogs
• Dog Training books

Put those keywords into 1 adgroup. Notice the words:

Dog & training appear in all of those keywords, meaning they will be bolded if any of those words are typed into Google. As for the rest of those keywords, divide them up into separate adgroups. It’s ok to even have 1 keyword for an adgroup too. In this method you will be keeping your adgroups highly relevant. Your CTR will go up and so will the quality score.

4. Don’t target broad versions of keywords. 

There are 3 different ways your keyword can be targeted: Broad, phrase & exact. 

Broad means if you target the keyword “dog training books”, anyone who types “Dogs” into Google will see your ad. This is unlikely to get anyone to click on it, meaning you will have an ad showing under impressions where it won’t get clicked which will further dilute your CTR and quality score.

Instead make sure all your keywords are targeted for exact and phrase matches. This means when your entire keyword will be typed into Google, your ad will appear which will highly increase the chances of it being clicked on.

5. I avoid using the “Content” Network if possible. 

Google has an extra feature of showing your ads on it’s sponsored networks whether it be blogs or other popular websites which contain Google ads. This is called the “search network” I believe. In Bing it is called the “Content Network”.

I avoid using these places because: They show your ads on blogs that are NOT relevant to your keywords. This leads to your ad showing in 100’s and even 1,000’s of different places, not getting any clicks and completely diluting your CTR.

Most of the time when people ask me why they have a 0.02 CTR rate, I tell them it’s probably because they have enabled the content network. I recommend turning it off. Keep your ads/keywords highly focused on your specific niche.

Don’t go for traffic, go for targeted traffic! This will decrease your number of impressions and raise your CTR and thus your quality score as well.

Using the content network CAN work, but you need to do other things in order to make that happen and it’s a whole other tutorial I’ll get into some other time.

Putting it altogether:

It can certainly seem difficult to utilize all of these methods at first, but I promise with a little practice, you’ll be able to get it down quickly. This type of stuff is very obvious once you know how it works, but most people don’t know about it and so they waste their money and see fewer than expected profits.

What you just read here is the most up to date and optimal way to get your ads higher quality scores, get more traffic than your competitors and pay less in the process. And there are very few ppc advertising tutorials out there that will explain this stuff for free!

I also recommend being VERY careful if you decide to try and advertise under Google adwords. Though they can be very rewarding to work with, they are also very strict on which sites/ads they allow.

I personally prefer Bing ads if I’m experimenting with the profitability potential of a website because Bing is a lot more lenient and there’s more room for error, not that I’m endorsing you make mistakes. But this is a matter of opinion. When it comes to Adwords vs Bing ads, Adwords has more profit potential, whereas Bing is much easier to work with.

Whatever you decide to do, know that these methods work on both Adwords & Bing. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of your reading this right now who have your own personal adgroups and campaigns you’d like to get help with. If that’s the case, feel free to post a comment below and I’d be more than happy to help out 🙂

Additional help: Use the following 2 tutorials to get lots of clicks at a very low price!

1) The first one is a PPC guide I wrote up after this one. If you take all the considerations and follow the rules I’ve laid out there, not only will you get a great quality score, but you’ll also get super cheap clicks!

2) As if the PPC guide wasn’t enough, I documented what following it on just a few of my campaigns led to: Higher CTR, low costs, VERY high CTR and more! See what following it did for me personally 🙂

Remember that quality score is just 1 metric of a bigger set of metrics and that the better and more relevant your site is in accordance with the keywords it targets and the ads you put up, will all play a gigantic role in getting that higher rating and thus getting lower costs and better conversions! 

Questions?

Should you have any questions regarding quality score or PPC in general, feel free to ask me about it here and/or in the other 2 resources I just posted, I’d be more than happy to advise you on saving money through PPC 🙂