The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

In recent months, Google has made significant changes to the algorithm it uses to calculate Quality Score. In an effort to increase the quality of keywords, ads, and landing pages, Google has again modified the old CTR (Click-Through-Rate) * Max CPC (Cost-Per-Click) formula from the past.

You can read more about it here:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215

What does this means for you? More than ever you must ensure that your account structure is well thought out and that your keywords, ad copy and landing page all fit together thematically.

A few tips to consider:

1.) Whenever possible, include your keywords in your ad copy

2.) Create a number of concise ad-groups. This will help you achieve #1 as well. If you sell several different types of products - think about campaign structure, ad group structure and create a clean hierarchy

(Example)

Campaign = Cakes
Adgroup 1 = Blueberry Cakes
Adgroup 2 = Cherry Cakes
Adgroup 3 = Strawberry Cakes

As you can see, I did not create one adgroup named "Cakes", but rather I broke down each specific type of cake and assigned it to its own adgroup. This will allow me to write descriptive ad copy for each individual adgroup - which in turn will allow me to connect with the user at a much deeper level. (Ehren discussed this issue in more detail a few weeks ago. Click here to read his post.)

3.) Landing Pages - Be sure to carefully select landing pages and think about which landing page best represents the keywords and ad group you are working in. Your landing page should include as many keywords as possible from your ad group, and it should directly address the product or service that the user is searching for.

I hope this helps you better understand Quality Score.

Trace, Clickable SEM Guru

Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. “Clickable Gurus” participate in numerous online search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions, and, each week, one of the gurus posts a search marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.