Quality Score | CTR and your landing page quality score

What is quality score?

Quality scores are metrics. They are used in Google AdWords and Bing Ads but is calculated and interpreted differently. It is the search engines on proprietary metric developed internally to help communicate account performance to advertisers. For example take a look at how Google AdWords quality scores works first. Google AdWords Quality Score is on a scale of one to ten and determines your ad rank with 1 being poor and 10 being excellent. Your ad rank determines in what position your ad will appear on the search engine results page and the price of your CPC in the auction. This rating is shown on the keyword level in your user interface in the AdWords account.

There are ratings on the same scale applied to other areas of the account but we can only see the keyword level scores. Quality score is calculated on a per query basis very quickly and it takes into consideration a range of factors, some of which we know and some of which we don't. Consider it a Google secret on how they determine what cost per click will be, which position your ad will show in and how often you'll receive impressions.

Known factors include but are not limited to: --Click-through rate -- Landing page and ad copy relevance -- Bid amount -- Daily budget -- Account history -- Landing page load time -- and in some cases geography.

New keywords that are added to the account are assigned a temporary score inherited from other keywords in the ad group or campaign. Until they build up enough history to have a score of their own. Quality score does not often change dramatically from impression to impression but it will move up and down based on these factors over time.

The quality score is calculated before the impression is made and displayed in the auction. So let's walk through what the different ranges are and what they mean. The first group of scores is in the 1 to 3 range and that will actually hinder impression serving as the most often effect and it will result in higher CPCs and lower CTRs. The second group 4 to6, is considered better. And in the range of 7 to 10, it is considered best. Where you're most likely to see a higher CTR, lower CPCs and a higher impression rate for ad serving.

You might be asking how do I get a score of 10? The area which you are most likely to see 9 and 10 is with keywords around a branded item or word for a product or service. There are just some industries where quality score is very competitive and is difficult to obtain a higher score or better CPC no matter how hard you try. One very important thing to keep in mind though quality score is an important factor when evaluating account performance but it's most certainly not everything. Some tend to believe that just because it came from Google it's more important than any other metric. It's not. So let's talk about Bing Ads. Bing Ads' quality score is also on a scale of 1 to 10 but is not calculated based on performance amongst competitors. Instead, it is based on how competitive your ads are in the marketplace based on three things. They are planning page relevance, whether or not the page is relevant to the keyword where the ad is going to. For example, is the keyword on the page? The landing page user experience, a bit more subjective in the sense but liken it to whether or not the page is in good working order or actually has the promise content on the page from the ad and keyword relevance.

Does the pairing of the particular keyword from the landing page make sense? If your keyword is “canvas shoe design” and the landing page is about canvas shoe design, you're in good shape. If the landing page is about 2010 Jeep Wrangler you will not score so well. Let's talk about the ranges. 1 of 5 is considered underperforming or poor and should receive attention in areas of optimization around the keyword itself, a match type, ad copy or landing page. 6 is considered competitive or no problem, but that the CTR of the keyword is no better than average in the marketplace against competitors. 7 to 10, which means that the keyword is very competitive or good and has a higher than average CTR of competitors that are targeting the same traffic.

Quality scores across Google and Bing are great indicators for performance areas that you can go into and improve overall account performance.

 

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