A note on Quality Score!

Quality Score or QS as we know it can be a HUGE headache. Basically for those dabbling in PPC QS determines a couple of things for you.

1. ad position

2. cost per click

Okay.  That being said, what does Google have to say about it?

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Quality Score for Google and the search network

Quality Score for Google and the search network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its minimum bid and the better its ad position.

The components of Quality Score vary depending on whether it’s calculating minimum bid or ad position:

• Quality Score for minimum bid is determined by a keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword to its ad group, your landing page quality, your account’s historical performance, and other relevance factors.
• Quality Score for ad position is determined by a keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword and ad to the search term, your account’s historical performance, and other relevance factors.

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Okay Great… Straight from the horses mouth… Our QS effects out minimum bid and our ad position. And its “calculated” using a “variety” of factors.  This is fancy for… “We look at your ad, link, domain root, content on domain, and content on subpages you want to link to… We then figure out how relevant your content is to the keyword… and we grade you on it.”

Easy enough.  So how do we go about beating the QS. I’m going to tell you 2 little techniques that I use so that I don’t have to worry about my QS.  Both of these techniques are almost the same… yet they are different in their own little way.

The 1st Technique

Build “on page” content that is relevant.  By doing this Google will recognize that the first page that the user lands on is related to your keyword.  This can most easily be accomplished by RSS feeds drawn into the page. Now, I have no clue how to set something like that up.  I outsource the nitty gritty stuff.  However, if you have Poll Factory or if you are a member of PPC-Coach then you don’t have anything to worry about it.  Both scripts you are given have RSS feed integration so that you can work on busting your QS.

The 2nd Technique

Now lets say you already have a website in a specific niche.  That website has some natural traffic coming in and also has some decent content.  You can now build folders onto that website and build your PPC landing pages right on the site. Lets take an example.  Say I had a dating blog.  And this dating blog had some pretty good content.  Granted the content was scraped from ezinearticles and other sources, overall it was doing pretty good.  Had a slow stream of natural traffic and even had a PR1.  I can now us that website to my advantage.  It already has credibility in Google’s eyes.  I would be stupid not to take advantage of that opportunity! So I set up a folder on that website titled “online-dating-made-easy-join-now” or something to that effect.  I can then begin building my landing pages for dating into that folder.  The content on the root domain will help to bust my QS!

Misc Techniques

• You want to show that your website is realted to the keyword.  So one thing that you can do is to post links at the bottom of the site that direct users to articles.  This works best in the 2nd technique.
• Add your Privacy Policy, Terms and Condition, About, and Contact Us pages.  Adding these will help Google see that you are a real website.  I have learned that Google likes real websites.  So unfortunately you should create these.  Once again… If you have Poll Factory or PPC-Coach these are taken care of for you.
• … Basically… The more content on the site the more your QS will go down… However, you don’t want your site cluttered with content, so if you add some make it below the fold.
• Make your ad copy relevant to the keyword and the page your linking to. Googles dynamic keyword insertion is AMAZING! The higher your CTR the better your QS will be.  So relevant ad copy makes for higher clicks. (I’ll go into the DKI tomorrow if you want me to just let me know)

There is some QS basics for you.  Just remember this.  The more relevant the Keyword was to your content the better your Quality Score will be with Google.

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