The PPC "Keyword Quality Score" is nonsense

byChrisGooden

14.2K followers

Updated 8 years ago

Every keyword in a PPC campaign is given a "Keyword Quality Score". But it's meaningless. A keyword is a keyword is a keyword. It has no "quality", therefore no possible quality "score".

What Is A "Keyword Quality Score"

When you right-click on your Quality Score it claims to have been measured on the basis of 3 items.

• Ad Relevance: But a keyword is not attached to an Ad. It is attached to an Ad Group
• Landing Page. But a keyword has no Landing Page. Only the Ad has a Landing Page. You can have several ads in an Ad Group, each with a different Landing Page
• Expected CTR (Click-through Rate). But you can't click on a keyword. You can only click on an Ad.

If you look at your Ad, which you'd logically expect to have a Quality Score, you'll see that it doesn't have one. The Ad Group does. So does the Campaign.

The Ad is the ONLY component of the structure which does NOT have a Quality Score, even though it's the ONLY component that can be clicked on, and the ONLY component that has a Landing Page.

Making Sense of your "Keyword Quality Score"

So what is actually happening? The deeper you dig into the blurb, the more obtuse and convoluted the "information" gets. It has less "information" than most Government documents (and they hold Guinness Records for obfuscation).

In my experience, as both as an advertiser and as a computer programmer, here's is what I see happening:-

A searcher types in a keyword. If that keyword matches a keyword in your ad group, then

1. The keyword acquires a score of 1 in the "impressions" column
   • This is not because "the keyword is shown", it might be or it might not be. But the keyword has been "triggered".
2. One of the ads in your Ad Group gets added to the list of Ads on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
3. The Ads that are listed on the SERP are sequenced in the order of their "bid" price, highest first
4. The SERP is presented to the searcher
   • If the searcher clicks on the ad then the keyword gains a score of 1 in the "clicks" column, and in a (not displayed) "relevance" column
   • When the searcher leaves the SERP, without clicking the ad, the keyword gains a score of 0 in the "clicks" column, and in a (not displayed) "relevance" column
5. The ratio of clicks per impression is then calculated as CTR.
6. You instantly see the clicks, the impressions, the CTR
7. The "Quality Score" is not displayed at this time, but is calculated as follows:-
   • The CTR of the Ad is compared with the CTRs of the other Ads on the SERP and ranked one of at or above or below the average
   • The LPs of the Ads on the SERP are trawled for reference to the keyword, and ranked one of at or above or below the average
   • The "relevance" of the ad is compared with the "relevance" of the other Ads on the SERP and ranked one of at or above or below the average

The next time that same keyword is typed in, a different Ad in your Ad Group gets selected, and the process is repeated. Ads in the same Ad Group are selected in rotation.

The Quality Score is calculated each time the keyword is triggered, but is not displayed immediately. When it has been triggered a few times (about 100 times, in my calculations):-

• The Quality Score for the keyword is then displayed.
• The Quality Scores of all the keywords in the Ad Group are aggregated, and an overall Quality Score is applied to the Ad Group
• The Quality Scores of all the keywords in all the Ad Group are aggregated, and an overall Quality Score is applied to the Campaign

What happens next?

Nothing happens for the first few weeks except that, from time to time, you get messages suggesting ways to improve.

Most of these suggestions are so obliquely worded that you cannot actually work out what the heck is being said. For example "... the way to increase your relevance score is to improve your relevance". Duh!

How? Not a dicky.

After 30 days, if there has been no improvement in the Quality Score, then the Ad Group begins to acquire "penalties" in the form of the "Cost Per Click", the penalties ultimately leading to the famous "Google Slap" (where you are priced out of the market).

But that won't happen unless you have persistently ignored advice to clean up your act.

So, how to get your 10/10?

Simple!

1st action: Keep 2 very important things at the front of your mind at all times

1. ROI IS THE ONLY MEASURE of any relevance whatsoever in PPC advertising. Never lose sight of that in the maze of numbers that PPC becomes
2. STATISTICS LIE
   • Don't be think that a CTR of 25% is better than a CTR of 5%.
   • It's an illusion
   • You get 25% CTR from just one click on an Ad that's been shown 4 times
   • You get 5% CTR from 200 clicks on an Ad that's been shown 4,000 times
   • Guess which one has got you more sales. Yes, it's the 5% one.
   • There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Beware!

2nd action: Suspend the keywords that rank below a chosen level. I don't do this until the Ads have been running at least 2 weeks, thus have had time to collect "statistically relevant" data.

Personally I suspend all those below 4/10. It's annoying because many will have been clicked on, often gaining more clicks than my 8/10 Ads. And some of those clicks will have resulted in sales. I want them to stay running, and earning, but their ROI is going to become degraded if I get priced out.

Knocking out those below 5/10 has the immediate impact of raising the 4/10 to 5/10 (remember that the rating is on the Ad Group, not on the keyword) and the whole thing ripples up.

3rd action: Look at each keyword, in the context of the Ads in the Ad Group, and isolate those that "don't really fit". Move them to a new Ad Group and write new Ads for them.

4th action: Evaluate from the bottom up, starting with the 1/10. Look at the colors (Red Yellow Green) of the 3 params (Ad Relevance, Landing Page, Expected CTR). Fix the red ones first. I address them in the following order:-

Landing Page:

The searcher never sees your Landing Page unless he clicks on the Ad and gets taken to it So the ranking you got did not come from any action by him/her. It came from the spider that went to the Landing Page . But spiders are not too bright.

What spider looks at is "measurable" items like:-

• Is the triggered keyword on the LP (ideally in the page title and also in the first paragraph)?
• Are there also other keywords on the LP that "relate" (in spider terms) to the triggered keyword?
• Does the page have "content"? In spider terms this means "Is there more than one paragraph?", "Are There Headings?", etc
• Is the page on a site with "substantial navigable content"? In other words, is there a "well populated XML sitemap?" Many PPC pundits reckon that the spider not only trawls the Landing Page but skims the entire website while it's there

"Ad Relevance"

This is down to whether or not the searcher clicked on the Ad. Only 3 things impact that

• Was the Ad on page gazzillion of the SERP, thus never actually seen by the searcher? If you up the bid, will it get better visibility?
• If the searcher actually saw the Ad
  • Was the Ad Headline too boring? If you spice it up, will it help?
  • Was the Ad Text unconvincing? Can you sharpen it?
  • Was the CTA (Call To Action) missing? Can you make it more obvious?

At the end of the day, some people (me being one) never click ads, they only ever click organics

"Expected CTR"

This is down to external factors, including the other two items, so fixing "Ad Relevance" and Landing Page also fixes "Expected CTR", but you won't know until you re-run the Ad.

5th action: Un-pause the paused keywords for a week and see if their ratings improve. Delete the keywords that fail to respond.

Finally

Never forget why you are doing it ===>>> R O I !