Quality Score: The Myth. The Legend. John A. Lee #HeroConf 2014

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The Myth. The Legend.

The Truth Behind Quality Score (No,

Really)

PRESENTED BY JOHN A. LEE

MANAGING PARTNER – CL IX MARKETING

HEROCONF – APRIL 28, 2014

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Who the Heck Is This Guy?

Managing Partner – Clix Marketing

Digital Advertising Geek ◦ Emphasis on “Geek”

Prior Sentences Served:◦ Hanapin Marketing ◦ Wordstream

Writer: ◦ Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, Clix

Marketing Blog, Acquisio Blog, PPC Hero

Speaker:◦ SMX, SMX Social, SES / ClickZ Live,

HeroConf, State of Search

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What is Quality Score, Anyways?THE TRUTH BEHIND QUALITY SCORE (NO, REALLY)

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Maybe, But We Can Define It

Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score

means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.

- Google AdWords bit.ly/qsdefined

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What Does it All Mean?

FACTORS

Expected click-through rate.

Display URL’s past click-through rate.

Account history.

Landing page quality.

Keyword / ad relevance.

Keyword / search (query) relevance.

Geographic performance.

Device performance.

IMPORTANCE

Fundamental piece of Ad Rank formula.

Ad Rank = Max CPC X Quality Score

The best combination of Quality Score and Max CPC gets the best ad position.

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How Do Google & Bing Differ?GOOGLE ADWORDS

Quality Score is calculated before the click.

Is a significant factor in ad delivery, ad position and actual cost-per-click.

BING ADS

Quality Score is calculated after the clicks.

Is a tool to help advertisers understand the quality of their campaigns and plan for optimization efforts.

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So, You Say You Want the Truth?

More questions than answers? Seek the truth?

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The Big Idea? K.I.S.S. THE TRUTH BEHIND QUALITY SCORE (NO, REALLY)

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Rocket scientists may have created Quality Score, but it doesn’t take rocket

science to improve it. - John Lee, April 28, 2014

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Best Practices Have Been Crammed Down Our Throats

◦ Campaign structure.◦ Keyword

segmentation.◦ Keyword in ad copy.◦ Keyword in landing

page copy.◦ Hard work pays off.◦ Yes, yes, yes…

Perhaps we missed the forest for all the trees?

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High Quality Score in Spite of Best Practices

Yes, these accounts exist.◦ Poor campaign structure.◦ Complete disregard for best

practices.

Example?◦ Actual account, actual client.◦ AdWords contained:

◦ 1 campaign◦ 1 ad group◦ 2 ads◦ 150+ broad match keywords

◦ Quality Score?◦ Campaign average of 9.◦ 7 – lowest Quality Score in the account.

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How Is That Possible?!?! Keywords were:

◦ All broad match. But…◦ Mid-to-long tail variations.◦ Highly relevant to both the audience AND search intent.

There was a huge negative keyword list.

Ads and landing pages were:◦ Simple and to the point.◦ Landing page was outdated. But…◦ Highly relevant to both the audience AND search intent.

CTR was consistently high.◦ Campaign averaged 4.5% to 5.5% CTR.

◦ (Conversion rate was high, too!)

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The Big RevealTHE TRUTH BEHIND QUALITY SCORE (NO, REALLY)

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We knew the truth all along:Google didn’t lie.

Relevancy matters. Click-through rate matters.

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Relevancy Rules the Iron Throne

(of Quality Score)

If Quality Score is a measure of relevancy,

And click-through rate is an indicator of relevancy,

Then improving Quality Score is as simple as increasing click-through rate.

Shocked? You shouldn’t be.

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A Recipe for Quality Score OptimizationTHE TRUTH BEHIND QUALITY SCORE (NO, REALLY)

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Quality Score Pie

Audience Research

Keyword Research & Analysis

Search Query Analysis

Negative Keyword Expansion

Hone Ad & Landing Page Messaging

Test. Test. And Test Again.

Mmmm… pie.

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Audience Create personas to understand your audience.

Who is searching for your product or service?

What is their question, pain point or need (search intent)?

What words do they use to seek the answer?

What factors will influence their decision to click (and convert)? Geography? Device? Demographics?

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Keywords Conduct deep keyword research based on audience.

Target mid-to-long tail keywords. De-emphasize “head” terms.

Segment keywords into campaigns and ad groups based on:◦ Audience◦ Search Intent◦ Geography◦ Device (well, wouldn’t that be nice!)

Conduct frequent search query analysis.

Expand negative keyword lists liberally.

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Ads & Landing Pages Write ad and landing page copy based on audience.

Align offer (call-to-action) and messaging to audience’s search intent.

Keywords in ad copy and landing page are still important.

Test often.

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Seek Thee Out the Ad Unicorn“Always be testing” to find high CTR ads. Or as Wordstream’s Larry Kim puts it – proverbial unicorns.

bit.ly/unicorn-ads

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Thank You!

Have Questions?

Find me at #HeroConf and let’s talk!

@john_a_lee

john@clixmarketing.com

www.clixmarketing.com