This document summarizes a presentation by John A. Lee on improving Quality Score. Some key points: - Quality Score is a measure of ad, keyword, and landing page relevance according to Google. It is a major factor in ad delivery and position. - While best practices like keyword segmentation are important, some accounts achieve high Quality Scores without following best practices by focusing on highly relevant keywords, ads, and landing pages. - The best way to improve Quality Score is by increasing click-through rate, as this indicates relevance. The presentation provides a "recipe" for optimizing Quality Score that focuses on audience research, keyword research, ad and landing page testing.

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The Myth. The Legend.
The Truth Behind Quality
Score (No, Really)
P R E S E N T E D BY J O H N A . L E E
M A N A G I N G PA RT N E R – C L I X M A R K E T I N G
H E RO C O N F – A P R I L 2 8 , 2 0 1 4

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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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#heroconf
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 Reveal
THE 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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#heroconf
A Recipe for
Quality Score
Optimization
THE 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