improve your quality score and cut your adwords costs

How To Improve Your Quality Score & Cut Your Paid Search Costs

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© GDM Interactive – www.gdminteractive.com | [email protected]

Paid Search (PPC)

Paid search is an ideal advertising method for small businesses, event marketing,

special time based offers and frankly... just about everything online if you do it right!

It's easy to get started and does not require large capital expense up front

You will begin to see results within 48 hours of getting started

You can easily limit your spending per day to keep costs within your budget

With its low upfront cost paid search allows advertisers to safely test to see what is most

profitable, then cut the losers and spend more on the winners.

Paid search requires attention to detail

Successful paid search requires attention to detail, creativity, and serious analytical

skills. Impatience and failure to pay attention to the details have cost many

inexperienced users to spend a lot of money very quickly and have nothing to show for

it.

We have learned some of those lessons ourselves. We'd like to pass along what we've

learned by providing some helpful online resources on this site to help get you started

with paid search advertising.

Contents:

The Quality Score (overview and explanation) ..................................................... page 2

Campaign Management Leads to Better Quality Scores ...................................... page 3

Keep Targeted Search Ads Separate From Content Ads ..................................... page 5

Manage High Traffic Keywords & Low Traffic Keywords Separately..................... page 7

6 Easy Tips For Better Landing Pages ................................................................. page 10

Conclusion & Credits............................................................................................ page 12


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The Quality Score

In the beginning pay per click advertising was strictly an auction oriented advertising

platform. The first pay per click network was Overture. Their model was very simple…

the highest bidder would get the highest ad placement.

This all changed when Google decided to get into the paper click advertising market.

Google’s model for pay per click advertising was similar to their approach to organic

search. Google shifted the focus of pay per click advertising just like they had for organic

search. The goal was to improve the relevance of their search engine listings for users,

both organic and paid. This new twist on the pay per click advertising model was called

the quality score.

When the quality score was first introduced it threw off a lot of pay per click advertisers.

But, as time has passed advertisers have learned to adapt to the quality score model.

Which is good because now most of the other key players in the pay per click advertising

game to have also adopted a similar model to the Google quality score.

Just what is “Quality Score”?

Quality score is the combination of scoring factors that indicate the high or low relevance

of your ad to the search query of the user. For example, a shoe seller may wish to bid on

the key word “feet” but their relevance to the searcher who has just typed in the keyword

feet could be rather low. In contrast, if this same shoe seller were bidding on the key

word “shoe” their relevance to the searcher who had just typed in the key word shoe

would be high.

Our shoe seller would be allowed to bid on both keywords feet and shoe. But because of

their low quality score for the keyword feet our shoe seller will have two bid higher to get

into the top ad positions. The high quality score for the key word should would allow our

shoe seller to get top ad positions with lower bids.


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Google and the other pay per click advertising networks have not fully disclosed all the

factors that play into the quality score rating system. However, two important factors that

contribute to a higher quality score include:

including the key word or keywords phrase in the advertising copy

including the key word or key word phrase on the landing page

While these two key factors seem simple enough achieving this correlation of keyword to

both the advertising copy and landing page can be a challenge for advertisers who are

bidding on the large number of keywords. But, because so much money is at stake is

definitely worth your while to organize and manage your campaigns a reality.

The following articles include some tried and tested methods for setting up your pay per

click advertising campaigns to improve your quality score and spend less money for your

paid search traffic,

Let’s get started!


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Campaign Management Leads to Better Quality Scores

Manage your pay per click campaigns better and improve your quality score with Google

(and with Yahoo! or MSN). You'll spend less money to get more traffic to your website.

Getting a better quality score means you don't have to bid as much to get your text ads

shown. You could even bid less than your competitors and still get better placement of

your ad. How does it work...

In addition to your click through rate quality score is determined by factors such as:

the relevance of your ad to the key word being searched

the relevance of the landing page to the key word being searched

…you may find you get better results when you organize your paper click advertising

campaign around word concepts, and types.

Organizing concepts

Let’s start with an example:

If you are advertising for office products you might want to organize your campaigns by

the same categories that you use to organize your website navigation. So you may find

yourself with separate campaigns for furniture, copiers, paper, printers, organizers etc.

rather than one large campaign for office supplies.

Instead of having one campaign for office supplies with 2000 keywords that lumps

together all sorts of keywords for office products such as ergonomic chairs together with

copier toner in one long contiguous list… you will be better off twenty campaigns with

100 words each where the key words and ads are organized and separated by concept,

theme, or product line.


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Structure leads to relevance

Managing your pay per click campaigns with this new categorization method you will find

that when you write your text ads you are not creating an ad that is very general like “Get

office products, large selection available”. Instead you will be creating targeted unique

copy and targeted unique ads for each of your twenty campaigns.

Writing text ad copy that is highly targeted to the keywords being searched will greatly

improve your quality score and lower the amount of money you are required to bid to get

that coveted top placement. You'll find the added work you put into your pay per click

management is well worth the effort.

Now go one step deeper

When you have organized your pay per click campaign by the larger concepts you can

then use ad groups as sub-sections of your campaigns to further subdivide your

keywords and achieve even higher relevancy and improve your quality score.

Take your campaign for copier paper… break it down into adword subsections of very

specific keywords that match up with some very specifically worded advertising copy.

Your campaign for copy for copiers might have ad groups broken out by manufacturer:

Xerox

Brother

Konica

Canon etc.

You can see the number of ad group’s you end up with is going to be rather large… but

that’s the general idea of being more targeted and relevant. It’s better to have 100 at

groups with twenty keywords than to have everything loaded into one big lump. And as I

have noted earlier you'll find the added work you put into your pay per click management

is well worth the effort when you see your quality score go up and your minimum bid

requirements go down.


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Breaking your keywords up in this manner forces you to write ad copy that is specific for

each keyword group and will provide the structure and discipline you need to write more

targeted copy and improve your quality store.

And a better quality score means you will spend less money to get more clicks.


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Keep Targeted Search Ads Separate From Content Ads

Organizing your adwords accounts and campaigns to separate pay per click results for

targeted search ads and targeted content ads will help you manage your adwords

campaigns for better return on investment. Let's take a detailed look at how...

Google has two basic types of ways that it displays your targeted pay per click

advertisements:

search ads

content ads.

This search ad and content ad concept is also applicable for Yahoo! and MSN.

Targeted Search Ad Results

When the searcher conducts research on the keyword or a keyword phrase they are

delivered the page of results in their browser. In the left column are the top ten pages

considered most relevant to the key word being searched. A smaller column to the right

includes paid advertisements that are related and relevant to the keyword being

searched. These are targeted search ads.

Clicks derived from targeted search ad results are likely to be highly effective because of

the context in which they are delivered. The searcher is actively interested in finding out

information related to the keywords being searched.

Traffic generated from paid clicks on targeted search ad results are likely to:

be highly engaged with your content or product

have better clicks through rates

be more likely to convert into leads or buyers.


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Targeted Content Ad Results

Many publishers of online content try to generate income by displaying ads alongside

their content. Syndicated content ads by Google (and a host of other networks) run on

these pages and these content ads are targeted to match the content of the ad copy with

the content of the pages. This match-up thereby delivers targeted content ads that are

relevant to for the reader of the web page.

Clicks derived from ads embedded in content are a completely different animal from

targeted search ad results which appear on the right hand column of the search engine

results page. The person clicking on targeted content ads has a much more casual

interest in what you have to offer. They were reading an article or scanning a page and

stumbled upon your ad… and clicked it. They may simply be curious rather than

genuinely interested.

Traffic generated from paid clicks on targeted content ads are likely to be:

less engaged with your content or product

have significantly lower click through rates

less likely to convert into leads for buyers once they reach your website.

These differences will dramatically affect how you manage your bids, budgets, copy

development and a whole lot more. Here are some key points to consider:

Differing click through rates and conversion rates

If you mix your search ads and content ads together in the same campaigns or adgroups

you may find it very difficult to track your performance because of the significant

differences in click through rates and conversion.

Click through rates for targeted search ads can be up to 100 times the click through

rates for targeted content ads. If you got an average click through rate of 1% from your

targeted search ads and only 0.01% from your targeted content ads they will have a


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combined campaign level click through rate of about .5% which doesn’t tell you anything

meaningful and gives you nothing you can act upon.

Differing keyword groupings & quality scores

The keyword lists you develop for targeted search ads will generally be putting

organized in categories and sub categories so you can match them up closely with your

ad copy to get a higher quality score. This leads to a large number of campaign and ad

groups which demands greater time to manage.

Quality score is not as important for content targeted results so you may want to have

fewer ad groups and target broader keywords which will trigger relevant content. This

makes your content targeted ad campaigns much easier to manage.

Differing methods for optimization

Optimizing for targeted search ads involves strategic bidding based upon conversion

rates for specific keywords. Optimizing for targeted content ads is more about tracking

the overall performance of the group. This is because currently you do not get any

feedback on which particular keywords triggered the ad placement for the click through.

Another unique element for optimizing targeted content ads is exclusions of irrelevant

words… For example an advertisement for Phlebotomy products targeting the word

“blood” might want to eliminate the word “vampire”.Or, poorly performing websites like

myspace.com so as to avoid all the twilight fan sites. These can eat up your daily budget

in a heartbeat so be on guard!

Excluding irrelevant words and websites is not an issue with targeted search ads.


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Manage High Traffic & Low Traffic Keywords Separately

High traffic keywords have the potential to generate a lot of business on your website but

they also generate a lot of costs very quickly because they get so many clicks. Learn to

manage your high traffic keywords carefully... lest they eat your lunch.

Once you have developed a long list of advertising keywords you will inevitably find that

a small handful of these advertising keywords generates the most traffic to your website.

Which is usually good news. But these high traffic keywords do not always the most

conversions. Which can be very bad news.

That is why you should...

Isolate your high traffic keywords

Actually, your first step should be to separate your advertising keywords into campaign

groupings based on context and theme which we discussed previously. However, after

you have separated your advertising keywords into logical divisions using your adwords

campaign structure you still need to go a step further to achieve better keyword cost

efficiency.

High traffic keywords

High traffic keywords (also called fat head keywords) are usually less targeted keywords,

consisting of single words or very short phrases etc. Being less targeted these high

traffic keywords tend to deliver lower conversion rates than lower traffic keywords which

tend to be more highly targeted.

Your bidding strategy for search targeted results will be different for high traffic keywords

and low traffic keywords. You may need to bid lower on high traffic keywords to make

them work with their lower conversion rates. But, even with lower conversion rates these

high traffic keywords are very important and tend to deliver the most gross conversions

because of sheer volume.


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The key concept is that this conversion rate will tend to be different for high traffic

keywords and they should be managed separately.

High traffic keywords will begin to flow to the top of your reports if they are sorted by

volume in descending order. This sorting makes it easier to spot your high traffic

keywords then peel them off and move them into separate campaign groups.

This separation will greatly facilitate applying your unique bidding strategy for these

words. Separation will also allow you to focus on that handful of high traffic keywords

without getting lost in a long list of mixed high and low traffic keywords.

Low traffic keywords

Low traffic keywords (also called long tail keywords) tend to be more specific with fewer

single words, contain longer phrases, have more qualifying words etc. Because these

low traffic keywords are more specific and qualified they generally have higher

conversion rates and create high quality leads.

Low traffic keywords can be managed more on a group level and less as individual

words. Low volume keywords will also require less frequent tinkering.

How will this separation look?

Let’s say you are promoting a web site that sells office products. You have created your

campaign categories to include, office furniture, copiers, printers, paper etc. Using this

method of separating high traffic keywords from low traffic keywords for search targeted

results you would now have your campaigns for each of these categories set up like this:

1. Office furniture—content

2. Office furniture—search (high traffic keywords)

3. Office furniture—search (low traffic keywords)

1. Copiers—content

2. Copiers—search (high traffickeywords)

3. Copiers—search (low traffic keywords)


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When you add in the adword group sub-sections your campaign structure might look like

this:

1. Copiers—content category level

Konika ad group level

Canon ad group level

Xerox ad group level

2. Copiers—search( high volume keywords) category level




1. Copiers—search( low volume keywords) category level




Separate your ad budgets

Another advantage to separating high traffic keywords from low traffic keywords is the

ability to separate your ad budgets and manage them accordingly. Because Google

applies budgets on the campaign level your separation of high traffic keywords and low

traffic keywords will have to take place on the campaign level rather than the adword

group level to accomplish this separation of ad budgets.

When the budgets for low traffic keywords and high traffic keywords are mixed the high

traffic keywords will tend to burn up the available cash on the front end and possibly limit

your exposure for the low traffic keywords that that are so highly targeted and have good

conversion rates and create high quality leads. separating the budgeting for these tow

types of advertising keywords will help you balance the two.

Your organizational structure for campaigns is destiny. How you organize, categorize

and budget your campaigns will have a dramatic impact on your success with pay per

click advertising.


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6 Easy Tips For Better Landing Pages Your Google quality score for pay per click advertising campaigns is determined not only

by what you do within your campaigns and adword groups. Your Google quality score is

also affected by what Google finds on the landing pages you are sending your paid

clicks to.

Here are 6 quick tips for tweaking your landing page to improve your Google quality

score for adwords pay per click advertising.

Link building and organic search optimization

Techniques that work for improving page rank in your organic search marketing program

also work for improving the quality score of you pay per click adwords campaigns. Treat

your landing page like a page that you would want to get high rankings for organic

search. Build deep back links to your landing page. Use your high volume or high

performance keywords from your adwords pay per click advertising campaigns as your

anchor text. Not only will this work improve your Google quality score but it will also help

with your organic search marketing efforts in future.

Site map inclusion for internal linking

Internal linking is another organic search technique you can use for your landing pages

to improve your Google quality score. Landing pages for pay per click advertising are

often left to hang out in limbo land and are not properly linked into the overall web site.

Sometimes because of special offers, discounts and the like it is not advantageous to

link all your landing pages into your main web page navigation systems. But you can get

any page linked into y our site and indexed by including it in a site-map and making sure

that your sitemap is updated and is submitted to the major search engines.

Get your high volume keywords into your content

As with organic search optimization you cannot effectively optimize a single page for

more than a couple of key words or phrases. Take your top performing keywords or your

top volume keywords and integrate them into the content of your landing page. Run all

your keyword density diagnostics on your landing page just like you would for organic


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search optimization. Tweak the content until you get a keyword density you would be

happy with for organic search. Watch your Google quality score improve!

Tweak your landing page’s meta tags

In a similar vein to the previous point… add your top performing or top volume keywords

to your landing page’s keyword meta tags, page description meta tags, and even title

tags. Run all your keyword density diagnostics on your landing page just like you would

for organic search optimization. Tweak the content until you get a keyword density you

would be happy with for organic search.

Add Essential Site Pages

Make sure your site privacy policy page is linked to your landing page, somewhere in

your header or footer is usually a convenient place.

Check your Google relevance

Google has a Site-Related Keywords tool you can use to see how Google ranks your

landing page for relevance to the key words you are targeting. Keep working your page

using the above tips until you reach the point where Google considers your landing page

to be very related to the keywords you are using.

Don’t wait to get started!

Improve your Google quality score and you'll spend less for your pay per click

advertising and get better results.

Your quality score determines how much you have to pay-to-play in the adwords world.

Don’t let advertisers with higher quality scores can bid on the same keywords as you...

get higher page placements than you and pay less money for them. Google will let you

bid on keywords with with your low quality score but it's going to cost you more.

You could be paying way too much for your adwords traffic..

So now you should be asking "what could be more important than improve my Google

quality score?"


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Written by Craig Scott, GDM Interactive

GDM Interactive is an internet marketing service agency based in Raleigh/Durham NC.

When we are not enjoying the long summers and fabulous scenery in this part of North

Carolina we work with clients to make more effective use of internet marketing

techniques and strategies for finding new customers and growing your business online.

GDM's internet marketing services include:

Pay Per Click Management – Go beyond the basics to develop targeted adword marketing

programs that reach deep into your marketplace to find new customer source. Plus, we’ll keep

your cost per click low and deliver quality traffic.

Search Engine Optimization – Drive targeted, low cost traffic to your website with focused

content development and linking campaigns. We'll take the time to gather real insight into your

business and show you how to tap into new markets and new customer sources.

Email Promotions – Create new sales and retain solid customers with effectively focused email

marketing. We'll show how to manage this complex marketing method for maximum effect.

Direct Mail - The web's best kept secret is that a huge amount of traffic is driven by print! We’ll

show you how to integrate mail and web, track online and offline for the highest return on your

investment.

Web Analytics & Landing Page Analysis – Measure you online results and see where your ad

dollars are having the greatest impact. We’ll show you how to create actionable goals based on

what your web visitors are really doing rather than what you wish they were doing.

Get started marketing online Today:

Call: 1 888 436 4977

email [email protected]

Visit: www.gdminteractive.com Follow us on: Facebook | Linked-In

Let us put our experience to work for you!

improve your quality score and cut your adwords costs

Documents

paid search advertising

quality score model

paid search costs

organic search

google quality score

paid search ppc

successful paid search

quality score overview