Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here.
Stocks are volatile, inflation is rising, and talk of a global recession is getting louder. In this economy, you can’t afford to waste money. You want to create a significant impact immediately and find the quickest path to revenue. And pay-per-click (PPC) strategies are typically employed by businesses looking to do a paid adverting campaign.
But it’s not so simple. Google explicitly states that it ranks original, high-quality content higher in search results. And as a digital marketer, I’ve found that Google expects the same clickable quality in its ads as it does with organic search. The search engine isn’t looking for an organization that only gets a few clicks to their landing page for direct conversions, especially because it already has its own shopping panels for that.
Most people assume that all businesses pay the same price for ads. However, accounts that create hundreds of quality campaigns and provide an authentic user experience are valued higher than those that don’t. Google even incentivizes these advertising strategies by offering discounts of up to 90% on quality campaigns, so you’ll spend $0.10 for every $1.00 the average person spends on the same keyword clicks. In other words, with a fully optimized campaign, you can get up to 10 times more results for the same spend.
Raising your score is top priority
When you create a good campaign with good content that a customer is looking for, it adds value to not only your customer journey, but also Google’s. The search giant wants people to find what they’re looking for efficiently and quickly so they’ll continue trusting its platform as the go-to. When customers click through, Google assigns a corresponding Quality Score based on how they react from there (time spent on page or where they went next).
Event
Intelligent Security Summit On-Demand
Learn the critical role of AI & ML in cybersecurity and industry specific case studies. Watch on-demand sessions today.
Watch Here
This calculation directly impacts your PPC costs, so it’s essential to improve your Google Ads Quality Score. It uses a scale of 1 to 10, and as you reach eight and higher, you’ll start to receive significant discounts from Google. Therefore, locating and raising this score should be a top priority for your PPC marketing strategy. Learning the ins and outs of managing your Quality Score can also save you money in the long run.
Understanding Google’s Quality Score
Now that we know that Google’s Quality Score exists, we should understand how it’s calculated. Although Google often holds its cards close to its chest, there are three main components of this Quality Score that we know for sure, and they’re no different from what makes a good website on the SEO side.
Page load speed
How fast a webpage loads is the top priority when building and configuring a website. According to Cloudflare, major corporations like Mobify and Walmart improved conversions by up to 2% simply by shaving up to one second from page load times. Whether it’s being loaded on mobile or desktop, the faster your page loads, the better it will perform.
Because it’s the heaviest-weighted factor, you should consistently work toward PageSpeed optimization. Doing so involves cleaning up unnecessary JavaScript or CSS-based third-party cookies; optimizing image sizes, formats, and rendering; and ensuring you have a dynamic site that adapts to any screen size. You might also consider a content delivery network if you deal with large volumes of content.
Content quality
The quality of your content is the second thing that will affect your Quality Score. With SEO, this means building a conversion funnel with an informative blog and information about your company, like an “About Us” page, for example. But PPC is different — you don’t want people visiting your website and getting lost in the shuffle. Instead, you can create specialized landing pages for your PPC campaigns without headers and footers.
Streamlined pages encourage people to come in and do exactly what you want, whether that’s filling out a form, making a phone call, or signing up for a free trial. You could even use white-label reports to gather interest and ask for an email to build a valuable list. Whatever approach you take, you should provide sufficient value to encourage engagement that matches the user’s intent for the search.
Click-through rate
Finally, there’s the click-through rate (CTR), which ultimately measures the effectiveness of the ad campaign itself. Your PPC posts should be directly relevant to the context of the user’s search and be straightforward as to why someone should click on them. The more click-throughs you get, the cheaper each click ultimately becomes.
You’ll gain a competitive advantage when you learn how to utilize tools, systems and processes to the highest efficiency possible. And, this helps you stand out in the marketplace when you can legitimately tell a client you’re capable of reducing its PPC costs by 25%, let alone 75% or more.
Locate and improve Google Ads Quality Score
Now that you know about Google Quality Score and how to improve it, it’s time to uncover your own ad quality. To find Quality Score, sign in to your Google Ads account and select “Keywords” from the upper left menu. Then, click the columns icon in the upper right corner and open the “Quality Score” section beneath “Modify columns for keywords.” Once you click “Apply,” you’ll see “Quality Score” displayed and can execute PPC strategies to raise it.
We’ve found that by making this an essential measured metric, you’ll see a direct impact on your bottom-line results.
Ross Denny is president and cofounder of Ezzey, a digital marketing agency based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
