How Google Adwords is like Santa Claus

In a lot of ways Google AdWords is like Santa Claus…

And since today is Christmas, it’s only fitting that we take a closer look at the similarities.

To children, Santa represents presents. On Christmas he travels around the world, shimmies down chimneys, and brings gifts for all the good little boys and girls.

To businesses, Google AdWords can also represent presents, but not in the form of a traditional wrapped gift. AdWords can travel the world and instead of bringing toys, it brings gifts to the “good” businesses in the form of shiny new customers.

If you’ve ever woken up after running a successful AdWords campaign and found new customers, then you know that feels just like it did as a kid waking up to find all those gifts under the Christmas tree. :)

But as the story goes, Santa doesn’t bring presents to everyone. For the naughty boys and girls, he just leaves a dirty lump of coal…

Does AdWords Think You’re Naughty Or Nice?

From the popular holiday song, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, we know that Santa makes a list and checks it twice in order to find out “Who’s naughty or nice.”

Well, AdWords uses a similar system…

It’s call the AdWords Quality Score. And if your campaigns are naughty (aka have a low Quality Score), then you’re more likely to find a lump of coal than new customers each morning when you check your account performance.

To find your Quality Scores and see if AdWords thinks your campaigns are naughty or nice, you need to click on the Keywords tab within your account. Then in the Status column click the white speech bubble icon to the right of any keyword to view the Quality Score.

AdWords will give you a score from 1-10 where 1-5 essentially means you’re naughty and 6-10 means you’re nice. If you find some naughty keywords in your campaign, then don’t worry. There’s still a chance you can turn them around…

How to Make a Naughty Keyword Nice

There are many factors that AdWords uses to calculate your Quality Score, but they all boil down into 3 core areas:

Click-Through Rate – This is by far the most important factor and it requires you to write compelling ads with strong offers. Remember, Google only makes money when people click on the ads so it’s in everyone’s best interest to show the ads that get the highest click-through rate.
Ad Relevance – To make your ads more relevant make sure to incorporate your target keywords into the ad copy.
Landing Page Experience – After prospects click on your ads, then make sure they can easily find what you promised in your ad. And with more and more people turning to tablets and mobile devices, your website needs to function properly on all devices.

When you’re reviewing your Quality Scores, AdWords will highlight which of those 3 areas need the most work. Focus on making incremental improvements to turn those pesky, naughty keywords around.

Now, in the spirit of Christmas and to reward you for reading this far, I’d like to give you a present…