If you are using Google AdWords, then you would be familiar with the numeric 1-10 quality score shown for your Ad campaign. This is used to determine the quality of your campaign, but what is it that makes a high quality score? If your ad is relevant and useful to users, then it can get high quality score. To be specific, it depends on three factors, Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR), Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience. For example, if someone searches for ‘low boot cut jeans’ , clicks on your ad on ‘low boot cut jeans’ and buys a pair of low boot cut jeans after coming to your website, then that means your ad campaign has earned a high quality score. Now, Google changes the way in which they report the quality score. Google publicizes that this change can tie the quality score more closely to the three factors that influence online visibility and expected ad performance.

How to Improve Quality Score?

To understand the impact of reporting change, it is very important to know how the three factors are used to calculate quality score.

• Expected Click-Through Rate - The past click-through rate of your keyword or simply how often you got clicks to your ads from your keyword, the past CTR of your display URL, and the overall CTR of your entire ads and keywords are considered.
• Ad Relevance - The relevancy of your keyword to your ads is considered. In addition to that, the performance of ads in your site, similar sites, and different types of devices (desktops/laptops, tablets and more) are also analyzed. You may get different quality scores for various devices.
• Landing Page Experience - The relevancy and transparency of the landing page is determined apart from checking the ease of navigability of your page.

Improving these factors helps you improve your quality score.

Real Impact of Reporting Change

Google clearly says that it’s only changing the way quality score is reported, not the way in which the score is calculated. Hence, there is no direct impact on the performance of your ad and you can continue with the efforts to optimize it for the above-mentioned three factors.

The change is apparent when you implement strategies to improve your ad campaign based on its quality score. A high quality score means the following:

• Lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC) resulting in lower costs per conversion
• Ads display more often and in better positions
• More exposure, clicks, conversions without having to raise bids

Google offers tips to help businesses improve ad quality. First, know what your customers are looking for and focus on creating very specific ad groups. Be selective when choosing keywords and include keywords in your ad text. Create simple but attractive ads, utilize strong call to action and try out multiple ads.  Review your ad campaign on a regular basis.