Quality Score on Adwords

It all comes back to how much money your ad makes for Google.

If your ad has high click-through (relative to the competing ads) you will be making more for Google, so you get a better quality score, and Google charges you less per click.

To get a good QS for a keyword, you need good consistency between the text in your keywords, ad copy, and landing page. You also need compelling ad copy that will improve your CTR (again, more clicks).

Is QS 7 high enough? It depends on the competitive position. If everyone else has 10's, then no.

Is £2 per click too expensive? If 1 in 10 visitors buy, then a £20 customer acquisition cost may be quite reasonable (depending on your margins of course). Are you measuring your conversion rate and the return on your investment (ROI)? Are you checking for wasted clicks with Analytics (click my photo for more about that)?

If your conversion rate is too low then look at your website, and your competitors websites. It may be that your competitors look better, have cheaper prices, or other advantages. Only pay for traffic if you are confident that you can convert a sufficient amount of it to make it worth your while.

You can improve conversion rate by:

- improving landing pages and making them into pages that sell and compel

- target your buyers more carefully through choice of keyword, matching options, geography, ad copy, and several other options in AdWords

If you improve your targeting to the point where you only get visitors that want to buy, *and* your website is good at converting that into sales - then you've cracked it and can afford to pay even more for your ads if you need to.

Good luck!

Hi

For problems regarding quality score, I suggest the following (this is taken from a blog I wrote recently on the subject):

It is necessary to do the following:

1. Assess landing pages. Google dislikes one page websites, or websites that ask a user to signup on the landing page. Websites which are highly relevant, and at least 5 pages are the only ones that now work. All websites should contain Ts and Cs and a privacy policy. Google also dislikes affiliate sites where links on the landing page are mainly to affiliate sites.
2. Ensure you have keywords which very closely match each advert. You HAVE to get a Click Through rate of at least 1%, or you will end up with a low Quality Score.
3. Keywords need to be moved into extremely focused groups to ensure a high Click Through Rate.
4. Write adverts with the main keywords in the headline, and ideally in the main body of the advert too
5. Content network should be turned off due to the likelihood they will create a Click Through Rate of less than 1%
6. If content network is required, separate campaigns should be run ONCE the quality score issue has been fixed
7. If this all fails, the easiest thing to do is move everything to a new account and start again. Quality Score will immediately restart at 5, and providing the keywords and ads are highly targeted, this will fix the issue.

I hope that helps!

Claire