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Google Adwords Quality Score Update

Author's avatar By Chris Soames 07 Oct, 2011
Essential Essential topic

A New way of reviewing keyword and landing page relevance

Value/Importance: [rating=4]

Recommended link: Source - Official Google Announcement

Our commentary

Yet another algorithm update from Google, this time relating to Pay Per Click. The new updates are to help Google set a better Quality Score based on keyword relevance & landing page relevance. Just as a reminder, it's well worth quizzing whoever manages Adwords for you about Quality Score - ask for a distribution of Quality Score for your keywords. Its importance is shown by what Google state in this release:

Campaigns with better-performing ads for user queries will continue to see higher Quality Scores, lower average cost per click and higher position on results pages.

Google say you can expect a good few fluctuations within your campaigns over the next few weeks, so be sure to wait for things to settle back down before starting to change things. The quality score for a particular keyword remains based on the following metrics described in our in-depth post Google Quality Score - the hidden formula:

  • CTR on Google.com
  • Ad copy relevance to query
  • Landing page copy relevance
  • Historical keyword performance
  • More recent keyword performance
  • Landing page performance

Marketing implications

Once the dust has settled from this update you should look through your account to identify weak keywords (i.e. review Quality Scores). This is dead easy to do in the Google AdWords interface or AdWords editor. Reviewing the ad-text & landing pages for each of your poor performing keywords with the factors above in mind will be key to increasing conversion & lowering your costs. When looking at your landing page(s) remember that the overall performance of that page will affect its score & also performance in a conversion sense.

You should consider:

  • Does it need to be a standalone page just for PPC (I would argue 90% of the time absolutely not, you are just creating a management overhead)
  • Does it cater for people on different buyer stages? Consider people in learning / browsing mode. those in comparison mode & those ready to purchase
  • Are you running A / B tests on your weaker pages?

Un-bounce is a tool you can use to test new page designs / lading pages before implementing across your site created this great info-graphic for running a/b tests. well worth checking out before you embark on your a/b testing.

Author's avatar

By Chris Soames

Chris Soames is a Smart Insights blogger and consultant, he has worked in digital marketing for over 6 years with the last few years managing international web strategies for a leading travel brand. Now the Commercial Director at First 10, an Integrated marketing agency, he helps clients get clarity on their marketing strategy and create campaigns engineered to engage with their consumers to help drive sell-through. Most of all, Chris enjoys working with talented people who want to create great (& commercial) things not just tick boxes.

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