Why Quality Score still matters: a complete guide to optimizing your QS on your campaigns

The Quality Score determines how eligible your ads are for an auction, how much you pay per click, and how your ad is displayed to potential customers. In this article, we'll explain why the quality score still matters and give you comprehensive tips on how to optimize your ads to improve your quality score.

Here's how the Quality Score of each of your keywords is presented in your campaigns:

What is the Quality Score and how is it calculated?

The Quality Score is a "diagnostic tool" from Google that measures (from 1 to 10) the quality of your ads based on three elements: the relevance of the ad, the expected click-through rate (CTR) and the landing page experience. Each component is classified as "above average", "average" or "below average" based on a comparison with other advertisers whose ads have been shown for the same keyword in the last 90 days. • Ad relevance measures how well your ad matches what potential customers are looking for • Expected CTR measures how likely it is that the user will click on your ad when it's shown. • Landing page experience measures the relevance of your landing page to the ad that a user clicked.

Optimizing Your Quality Score: Tips and Strategies

Ad relevancy:

The most important factor in improving ad relevance is making sure that your ad is closely related to the keywords in your ad group. Here are some tips to maximize ad relevance:

• Create relevant ad copy: Include keywords from your ad group in your headlines and descriptions.
• Group your keywords into ad groups by "themes", this will allow you to optimize your ads as well as possible.
• Test the keyword insertion tag {Keyword}: Dynamic keyword insertion allows you to dynamically insert the keyword into your ad copy, making it more relevant.
• Test pinning and unpinning titles that contain the keyword in your titles and descriptions.

Landing Page Experience:

Ensuring that your landing page is optimized for user search intent and that it is relevant to the keywords used in the ad is key to improving your landing page experience. Here are some (non-exhaustive) tips to optimize the landing page experience:

• Make sure that the landing page is relevant to the ad text and the user's search intent.
• Maximize the number of times your keywords occur in your ad groups on your landing page.
• Include a clear call to action (CTA) that is consistent with the ad text and the user's search intent.
• Optimize page speed: Compress all images to ensure fast load times.
• Make sure the landing page is mobile-friendly and suitable for different screen sizes.

Expected click-through rate (CTR):

The expected CTR is the most "difficult" element to optimize because it is based on historical data. However, here are some tips to improve your expected CTR:

• Test different unique value propositions in your ads.
• Optimize your ads by matching them to user intent.
• Test different extensions (sitelinks, hooks, etc.)
• Experiment with different unique selling propositions (USPs) and CTAs that match your landing page
• Use psychological buying triggers such as urgency, scarcity, and/or social proof.

Why is the Quality Score still important?

The Quality Score is not an indicator to be looked at and optimized at "all costs", but rather a signal of the overall quality of your ads compared to those of your competitors. Improving your Quality Score can result in better performance in your ad campaigns, including higher click-through rates, lower cost per click, and better ad positions.

Additionally, improving your quality score can help you gain an edge over your competitors.

In a future article, we will discuss the adRank, which is an important element to know as well.