Before you optimize your campaigns to have better results and pay less for it, you need to understand the principles of Google Ads and how it affects your Quality Score. Users don’t want to be bothered with irrelevant ads when they are searching for something specific. So, remember the Principle of Relevance:

“Your ads appear just when someone is looking for information, product or service like yours, and you can customize aspects like keywords, audiences, location and placement to get the most relevant customers. It means that you reach the right person, at the right time, with the right message.”

In a PPC campaign, advertisers only pay when the ad receives a click, and their order isn’t just based on bids. Do you know why? Google prefers to show more useful ads in a higher position on the search results page. Find out which factors determine your Quality Score.

What is the Quality Score in Google Ads?

Quality Score is a Google Ads estimate of quality for ads, keywords and landing pages. Higher-quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions in Google Ads Auctions. Quality score is composed of three items:

1. Expected clickthrough rate: a prediction of how often an ad can receive a click when showed. Google relies on user clickthrough rates as a vote, using millions of people to help them to decide which ads are best for each search query.
2. Ad relevance: Ad relevance is a metric of how well the ad matches what the user is searching for, and helps Google to show only useful ads. It also prevents businesses from merely paying their way onto a search that’s unrelated to their product or service.
3. Landing page experience: a highly relevant landing page results in a higher score and should have appropriate and original content that helps the user complete their task. It should be easily navigable and transparent about the nature of the business, how the site interacts with the user’s computer, and how it intends to use their personal information.

How to improve Quality Score for Google Ads

To improve your expected clickthrough rate, you should:

• Be specific in your ad: including keywords in your ad text, especially in headlines, to show people that your ad is directly related to their search.
• Experiment with different calls to action: do you offer free shipping or free returns? Call now or book now?
• Highlight unique values of your product or service: telling what makes you stand out from the competition and think about what matters to users.
• Create specific ad text: testing seasonal creative around holidays or special events, or test location-optimized creative.

To improve your ad relevance, you should:

• Add negative keywords: preventing your ads from showing on unwanted queries or queries not closely related to your product or service.
• Be specific on mobile: testing mobile-specific creatives if a user’s mobile search experience is different from desktop.
• Be local: targeting the right region for your business by using only the relevant languages and locations.
• Include relevant search terms in your ad copy: adding search terms that are related to your business in your ad copy can help make your ad more resonant for users.

To improve your landing page experience, you should:

• Send traffic to a specific landing page: driving clicks to pages related to a user’s query.
• Be consistent: making sure the landing page continues the conversation set up by your ad and follows through on the ad’s offer or call-to-action.
• Make your site transparent and trustworthy: making it easy for visitors to find your contact information, and clearly state what your business does. If your website requests personal information from customers, make it clear why and what you’ll do with it.
• Work on loading speed and clarity: helping users quickly find what they’re looking for by prioritizing the content that’s visible first.
• Rethink mobile: making more straightforward navigation for users, even more on mobile websites, so make sure yours is optimized.

You can see your current Quality Score and its component scores through four Quality Score status columns in the Google Ads interface: Quality Score, Landing Page Experience, Ad Relevance, and Expected Clickthrough Rate.

Higher-quality ads typically lead to lower costs, better ad positions, and more advertising success. When users see better ads, they’re happier and more likely to click on those ads. So, remember that even if your competition bids higher than you, you can still win a more elevated position at a lower price. Did you know that?