Quality Score is critical to your AdWords success, it makes or breaks your profitability. In this presentation: I show you: 1) What is quality score (and why you should care) 2) How the calculation works 3) Bust a few myths about Quality Score 4) I show you 7 ways to hack it to increase your profits By the end you will have the tactics at your disposal to boost your click-through rates, increase your Quality Score, decrease your cost per acquisition and profit from AdWords. Chop chop!

1. Quality Score Hacking
(Your Way to the Bank)
Google AdWords

2. 1. What is Quality Score
2. How its calculated
3. Myth busting
4. Hacking it - more competitive, for less cost!

3. A decade of
QUALITY
SCORE
and a brief overview

4. Aims to produce a
HIGH QUALITY
EXPERIENCE
for Google customers

5. Every keyword is
GRADED
on a 10 point scale

6. Calculated
EVERY
TIME
ads are shown

7. You can only see
TODAYS
SCORE
not historical

8. MARKS OUT OF 10
• High quality experience for Google customers
• Every keyword graded on a 10 point scale
• Calculated every single time ads are shown
• Account level Quality Score is real
• You can only see what your QS is today, not historically

9. Quality Score
COMPONENTS

10. Most important component is
CLICK-THROUGH
RATE
or CTR, for short

11. CTR is around
65 %
of the algorithm

12. Relevance of the
KEYWORD
TO THE AD

13. Your account
HISTORY
including deleted

14. The quality of your
LANDING
PAGE
experience

15. COMPONENTS OF QUALITY SCORE
• Click-through Rate (CTR)
• Historical CTR (expected vs actual)
• Relevance of the keyword to the Ad
• Your account history
• Quality of your landing page experience
• Landing page load times
• Expected impact of extensions and ad formats are factored
• Device and location bias

16. WHAT’S A GOOD CTR?
• 2% is not the average CTR
• It looks more like 5 - 6%
• You should aim higher

17. AD RANK
Advertiser with highest Ad Rank wins the auction

19. AD RANK =
CPC bid × Quality Score

20. EXAMPLE
AUCTION
Here’s one I made earlier

21. MAX BID X QUALITY SCORE = AD RANK
Max CPC
Bid
Quality
Score
Ad Rank Position
James £1.50 9 13.5
Olivia £2.00 5 10
Robert £3.00 3 9
Jason £3.50 2 7

22. MAX BID X QUALITY SCORE = AD RANK
Max CPC
Bid
Quality
Score
Ad Rank Position
James £1.50 9 13.5 1
Olivia £2.00 5 10 2
Robert £3.00 3 9 3
Jason £3.50 2 7 4

23. AD RANK BELOW / YOUR QS = PRICE
Max CPC
Bid
Quality
Score
Ad Rank Actual CPC
James £1.50 9 13.5
Olivia £2.00 5 10
Robert £3.00 3 9
Jason £3.50 2 7

24. AD RANK BELOW / YOUR QS =*PRICE
Max CPC
Bid
Quality
Score
Ad Rank Actual CPC
James £1.50 9 13.5 £1.12
Olivia £2.00 5 10 £1.81
Robert £3.00 3 9 £2.34
Jason £3.50 2 7 Highest
*price +0.01

25. Lets fell those
QUALITY SCORE
MYTHS

26. Quality Score benefits from
HIGH AD
POSITION

27. BUSTED!
• Google factors in ad position
• Understands higher positions attract higher CTR
• Quality Score calculation compensates for that!

28. Higher Quality Score makes
MORE
SALES

29. BUSTED!
• What improves is CPA (Cost per Acquisition)
• That’s not more sales
• That’s paying less for sales

30. Your Display Network score
AFFECTS
SEARCH

31. BUSTED!
• The criteria to determine Display QS is different
• Your performance on one, does not affect the other

32. Increasing your bid
BOOSTS
SCORE

33. BUSTED!
• Your bid is not part of the QS calculation
• You just end up paying more

34. Deleting low QS areas
INCREASES
SCORE

35. BUSTED!
• Historical performance is still factored
• Time is a great healer

36. QS GRADES
• 1 - 3, awful
• 4 - 6, average
• 7 - 8, good
• 9 - 10, great

37. HACK 1 - FOCUS
• F*ck 80/20
• Focus on top 5-10% of spend
• Biggest impact on performance

38. HACK 2 - SHARPEN
Quick rule of thumb:
• 1 - 3, awful – delete these!
• 4 - 6, average – optimise these first
• 7 - 8, good – fix after
• 9 - 10, great – leave these

39. HACK 2.1 - SHARPEN
• Go from average (5) to good, to great
• Strip out low CTR keywords in to new Ad Groups
• Confidently bid up top performers

40. HACK 3 - BRANCH OUT
• SKAGs!
• Single Keyword Ad Groups
• Highly relevant Ad to search term
• Don’t neglect the destination

41. HACK 4 - EASY SWING
• Branded keywords
• Product/service search term +brand
• Easy win

42. HACK 5 - SPRUCE UP
• Deploy your best Google-Consumer™ ads
• Method: Ad CTR x Conversion Rate = score
• Export ad data and use a spreadsheet, it’s quicker!

43. HACK 6 – LAZY SWING
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)
• Quick fix, an interim measure

44. HACK 7 - BLOSSOM
• Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)
• Higher CTR, boost in Quality Score
• Good for business

45. Quality Score impacts Ad Rank
Ad Rank impacts Cost per Click (CPC)
Cost per Click impacts Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
…and CPA always wins!

46. GOLDEN RULE
Relevancy for Google
Continuity for User

47. DON’T BE STUMPED!
• Questions?
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