What is Keyword Quality Score in Google Ads & Why is it Important?

Looking at and improving keyword quality scores is a fundamental part of Google Ads management.

There are 3 different components of keyword quality scores:

1) Ad relevance
2) Expected click-through rate
3) Landing page experience

A great way to improve ad relevance is to incorporate dynamic keyword insertion. This takes less than a minute to implement and can dramatically improve ad relevance.

Improving expected click-through rate is about improving your actual click-through rate. This can take the form of adjusting ad copy, incorporating a more compelling offer, and even adjusting keywords if it’s possible that the people finding your ad have the wrong intent.

Landing page experience is about the functionality of the site. This is important, but not as important as improving expected click-through rate.

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Video Transcription

0:05
hey this is Riley with Main Street ROI
0:08
and I wanted to take a quick moment to
0:11
talk about quality score so what is
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quality score why is it important and
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how can we use it to actually pay less
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for Clicks in Google ads
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so quality score is really just a uh
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it’s right here I have this column
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um added it’s really just a number one
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out of ten and it’s applied to
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individual keywords so the purpose of
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quality score is really just to indicate
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are we doing a good job with this
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keyword is it is it relevant is it in
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our ads is it on the website how are we
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doing in terms of click-through rates
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relative to our competition who are also
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bidding on that keyword
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and and Google gives us a score one out
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of ten to uh to tell us that
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so to see this I’m actually I’m I have
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an individual campaign selected here and
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I’m on the search keywords tab
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and uh quality scores actually composed
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of three different things so it’s a it’s
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a number one out of ten but it has three
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components and those three are landing
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page experience expected click-through
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rate and add relevance
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so first to to see these in your account
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you have to add them so you’ll go to
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columns
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modify columns
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scroll down to Quality score
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and then you’ll just add these four
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so the goal here is to improve keyword
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quality scores and by doing so we’re
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improving our ad Rank and you know when
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it comes to Google ads you can
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pay more and you can get into kind of
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like price Wars with competitors and
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outbid them but if you can outrank them
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then you can essentially you know get
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that ad impression without having to
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just pay for it and Google also cares
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about this because more than being paid
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Google wants to make sure that users
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have a very relevant positive experience
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when you know searching
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so that’s why quality score and rank are
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really important
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so the goal is to improve these as much
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as we can get quality scores of 10 for
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every keyword even though it’s really
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not achievable in most cases but that’s
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the goal so in order to improve these
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I’m going to break down each one a
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little bit so we have an above average
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ad relevance here for this keyword but
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if for example we had below average so
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this is you know what I would prioritize
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um ad relevance is about you know is the
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keyword in the ad copy itself
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um is it in a headline is it in a
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description one of my favorite tools for
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improving ad relevance is to actually
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add something called Dynamic keyword
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insertion to headlines in ads and what
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that does
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is
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um when someone types something into
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Google that’s the search term and
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whichever keyword was matched for that
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search term Google will then dynamically
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insert that into the ad at the the time
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that the ad shows
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so
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um very very useful every keyword in the
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in that ad group is then you know has
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the potential to show up provided that
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it’s within you know 30 characters if
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you’re doing you know headline for
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dynamic keyword insertion but really
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powerful for improving ad relevance
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expected click-through rate is probably
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going to be the most
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important in terms of its impact on
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quality score
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and what that’s
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um what that’s telling us is Google’s
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letting us know you know how
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what are click-through rate for these
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individual keywords is relative to what
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our competitors are getting in terms of
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click-through rate so if we have a below
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average expected click-through right
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here then that’s Google saying that
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other businesses that are bidding on
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that keyword in this case dental health
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um other competitors that are bidding on
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that keyword are getting higher
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click-through rates than us and so
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Google is less
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uh apt to show our ads for that keyword
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because
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Google only gets paid when the ads get
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clicked and so if our ads aren’t getting
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clicked then you know lower ad rank
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um less likely to show our ads so the
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way to improve expected click-through
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rate is a little bit harder than ad
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relevance it’s not as a you know as
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exact
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we have to really look at are our
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keywords getting in front of the Right
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audience for one are we are we getting
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in front of relevant traffic and number
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two do our ads include compelling ad
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copy you know do we have a really
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powerful offer
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um guarantees warranties stuff like that
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that’s really going to compel people to
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click our ads over other people’s ads so
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that’s what I would I would look at when
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trying to improve expected click-through
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rate
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and landing page experience is going to
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have the the lowest weight on quality
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score but still important this is about
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you know is is the keyword actually
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found on the landing page
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and do users have a positive experience
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on the landing page is it easy to
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navigate you know or do things kind of
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load in a weird way
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um
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that’s what landing page experience is
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about
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so um when looking at quality scores and
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you know which which keywords to
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prioritize first I would prioritize the
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keywords with the lowest quality scores
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and then kind of work your way up but um
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but yeah that’s kind of it on the crash
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course for Quality scores go out and
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implement this of course if you have any
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questions please reach out to us this is
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what we do we specialize in helping
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small businesses so um yeah and with
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that I’ll see you guys at the next tip