Marquita Arnold
SEM Coordinator
Over the years we’ve all heard of sneaky moves that could possibly help to get around the legendary Google Quality Score. Only later with experimentation we find out these tricks of the trade did not help us at all, in fact we ended up right where we started. How about we just play by Google’s rules? Yes I know this isn’t the popular choice because we all live in an age where we want to outsmart “The MAN”. If we spent a little more time understanding what it takes to have great quality scores, we might find that Google is just trying to keep us organized. I mean that’s not so bad, is it? Let’s shine a light on the legendary myths of getting a great Google Quality Score.
Myth #1: Quality score is lost during optimizations
Truth: The visible history is reset once changes are made but the history to calculate the quality score is preserved regardless of changes. Many advertisers fear making any changes to improve their campaign because they do not want to erase the history. Not optimizing your campaign can only lead to poor performance. Google says in the AdWords Help Center, “Optimizing your campaigns regularly will help you keep up with users and market trends and ultimately reach your advertising goals.” With that being said, experiment to see what works for your account and if things do not work out favorably you can always change it back.
Myth #2: Broad Match Hurts Quality Scores
Truth: Automatically setting all keywords to phrase and exact match will not be the magic trick to improving quality scores. You should always choose your keywords carefully when creating a campaign so if you have a highly irrelevant keyword with a poor quality score, changing it to exact match will not erase the fact that the keyword is irrelevant. Keywords on exact match and phrase match typesetting can hold poor quality scores as well. Check the organization of the campaign and what ads are being triggered by that keyword.
Myth #3: Raising Bids Raises Quality Scores
Truth: Although raising your Max bids will get you higher on the page, you cannot buy your way into a better quality score. However if after raising your bids and obtaining a higher position the performance of the keyword improves, this may affect your quality score in a positive way. But don’t get confused with thinking, “If I throw money at Google my quality score will get better”; you’ll be misled thinking that way. Yes Google wants to make sure they earn as much as they can but if your keywords, ads, and landing pages are irrelevant and create a horrible experience on their search engine, they would rather not even show your ads at all. Never forget Google’s main edge on the search industry is by creating a great user experience which means relevant content on their search page.
Best Practices: When in doubt just refer to these best practice tips provided by Google to help guide you in the direction of obtaining what we all strive for… 10/10 Google Quality Score.
- Organize your campaign by theme
- Choose your keywords carefully
- Include keyword in your ad text
- Use the right destination URL
For those who have established accounts, it may be time to do a little housekeeping to ensure your campaigns are cleaned up.
Tags: adwords quality score, google best practices, google myths, google quality score, quality scores
