The purpose of Google Ads is to make it easier for search engine users to find the information they are looking for. The performance of the ads, however, is determined by the users’ landing page experience and the ad relevance. These factors make up the quality score, and a higher quality score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant to someone searching for your keyword than other advertisers.
The landing page experience describes the experience a user has on the page they land on immediately after clicking on your ad. This page should be designed to encourage conversions, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. The landing page should reflect what is described in the ad, and depending on how well it reflects the ad content, the better the quality score will be.
Ad relevance describes how closely the ad matches what the user has searched for. For an ad to have a good relevance rating, the content of the ad must align with its keywords. If ads have keywords that are not relevant, they will appear for users who are not searching for that information, resulting in a poor relevance rating.
How does Google assess ad performance?
The relevance of your ads, as well as the quality of your landing page, will determine your quality score, and thus, the overall performance of your ads.
Google assigns a quality score to each keyword, which represents how accurately the ad matches the relevant keyword. The score is on a scale from 1 to 10 and is based on the combined performance of the ads’ expected click-through-rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. In addition to this, the expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience, will also receive a rating. This rating will be either below average, average, or above average. This rating will highlight opportunities for improvement on the quality score.
Best practises
There are changes you can make to both your ad, and your landing page, to improve the overall performance of your Google Ads. These best practices will help you improve your ad performance.
Improve page speed
The speed of your landing page is critical in determining its quality. Research from ServiceBell found that pages that take more than 3 seconds to load have a 32 per cent higher bounce rate. The higher the bounce rate, the lower your ads quality score will be. It is essential that your landing page loads quickly, for both the quality score of the ad and for getting the greatest number of conversions on your page
Make your page relevant to the ad
It is important that the landing page users are being sent to after clicking on an ad is relevant to the content of the ad. Your landing page should essentially be an extension of your ad.
Clear CTA on the landing page
A clear Call-To-Action (CTA) is essential to providing a good landing page experience. The CTA will be users’ biggest motivation for converting, so this must be one of the first things they see when they land on your page. Additionally, a CTA should use appropriate language. This includes a value proposition (e.g. “free trial”), urgency (e.g. “limited time only”) and more direct action-oriented phrasing (e.g. “discover”, “explore”).
Original and engaging page content
The content on your landing page should always be original and engaging. If the content of your landing page is interesting and engaging, users will be more likely to convert. Additionally, your page content must be original. If a landing page contains duplicated content, it may result in your ad performing poorly, or in legal issues for the business that has used plagiarised content.
Explain your unique value proposition (UVP) on your page
The unique value proposition (UVP) refers to the messaging on your landing page that explains to users why your product or service offering is better than the competitors. As with the call-to-action, the unique value proposition should be clear to the users, explaining why they should follow through with the intended action of the page.
Use ad groups to narrow your focus
It is important that when setting up your Google Ads Campaigns, ad groups are used to narrow the focus. By using several ad groups, ad copy can be tailored to specific audiences and interests, ultimately improving your quality score. Using multiple ad groups also allows more traffic to be generated, resulting in lower costs.
If you need help with your search engine marketing or navigating the ever-changing Google Ads landscape, Nous has a team of highly experienced digital marketing specialists right here who are results and brand-focused, so please reach out at [email protected] or call 07 3003 0722.
