The Easiest Way to Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score

Your Google Ads Quality Score directly impacts your ad strategy's Return on Investment (ROI). Improving your Quality Score (QS) will reduce your Cost Per Click (CPC) and reduce your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

The Three Quality Score Components

Your keyword Quality Score is comprised of three components: Ad Relevance, Expected Click Through Rate, and Landing Page Experience.

Ad Relevance is a measure of how closely related your ad is to the keyword being searched for.

Expected Click Through Rate is an estimation of whether a user would click on your ad if they showed it to them for that search.

Landing Page Experience is how the page shown to the user facilitates their desired outcome from the search.

Improving Your Quality Score by Focusing on the Ads

As you can see above, two of the three Quality Score components are related to the ad itself (Expected Click Through Rate and Ad Relevance). By improving your ad copy, you can quickly improve your Quality Score. Let's take a look at improving these individual factors below.  

Improving Ad Relevance

Ad Relevance is how closely aligned the keyword being searched on matches your ad copy. If the user searches for "Red Sneakers" and your ad headline shows "Buy Blue Sneakers", then the Ad Relevance will suffer. Conversely, showing "Buy Red Sneakers" will closely align your ad with their search terms and intent. "Buy Sneakers" in your ad headline will align less than "Buy Red Sneakers", so tightly aligning the keyword search term with your ad copy is vital.

Ad Group structures like SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Group) and STAG (Single Theme Ad Group) make keeping ad copy and keyword search terms tightly aligned much easier at the expense of a more difficult account management. Still, if you have a few terms that you know convert well, it is best to place them into their own SKAG/STAG and tailor the ad copy to those keywords.

In short, having the search term used by the user in your ad is vital to earn a high Ad Relevance score. Use the first or second Headline value in your ad copy to repeat the user's search terms. Also add the search term in either Description 1 or 2.

Here is an example for the keyword term "red sneakers" with high Ad Relevance:
Headline 1: Buy Red Sneakers
Headline 2: Largest Red Sneaker Store
Headline 3: Ships Today for Free
URL1: red-sneakers
Description 1: Buy Red Sneakers at The Largest Red Sneaker Store.
Description 2: All Red Sneakers in Stock and Ship Free Today!

Improving Expected Click Through Rate

As stated before, Expected Click Through Rate is an estimate of whether a user will click on your ad if it is shown to them. It is a bit tricky to grasp, but can be easily shown using our example. If the user searching "red sneakers" is shown an ad with the headline "We Don't Sell Red Sneakers", then they will likely not click on that ad. Obviously, no one would ever craft an ad like that while bidding on a search term knowingly, but it serves to illustrate the Google perspective when ranking the Expected Click Through Rate in the Quality Score calculation. Any ad copy that is not fully optimized for a user to click on them is telling users not to click on their ad, lowering the Expected Click Through Rate.

Expected Click Through Rate is best improved using your unique position or offer. Things like "Free Shipping", "Start in 5 Minutes", "Free Account", etc. all work to improve the Expected Click Through Rate. Some advertisers are using the callout "Click Here" in their ads ("Click Here to Buy Red Sneakers") which would definitely increase the ECTR, but is frowned upon by Google which may lead to a disapproved ad (or perhaps worse).

One ad copy aspect that can also improve the Expected Click Through Rate is to have a shorter amount of ad copy, not using the entire ad element field length. This requires that the ad copy be tightly written. Shorter ads that are concise (but complete) should outperform a longer ad that tries to stuff as much information as possible into the ad which may have the user decide just based on your ad, possibly lowering the amount of clicks you receive.

A/B Testing Your Ad Copy is the Only Way to Improve Your Ad Relevance and Expected Click Through Rates

Advertisers need to continuously be testing their ad copy in order to have any impact on Ad Relevance and Expected Click Through Rate and their resulting Quality Score Impact. When you iteratively test your ad copy, you can make small, incremental changes that improve your Click Through Rate. If your click through rate continues to improve over time, then Google will rank both of these factors higher since your ad itself is actually performing better when shown on the SERP.

A/B Testing ad copy has traditionally been a laborious, time intensive, inconsistent process. At AdOptics, we've completely revolutionized the ad testing process to make it completely automated, taking just a few minutes each week to manage hundreds of ad tests simultaneously.