Initial Google Keyword Quality Scores May Be Inaccurate

Search engine marketers who have done their research know the elements that compose a good through excellent Quality Score.  In our previous post, we summed up Google’s Quality Score stating that it is mainly based off of the relevancy between your keywords, ad groups, text ads, landing page quality and load time, historical click through rate and overall account history.

So, why do our keywords end up with terrible quality scores after putting together such a well-rounded account?  It may seem a bit confusing at first, but, don’t lose hope just yet!

Brad Geddes teaches us how to overcome this barrier and turn initial keyword quality scores into a very useful measuring tool against competition.

Geddes explains that when a keyword is added into an account, that keyword is given a quality score, but this is not the “actual” keyword or landing page quality score.

Geddes clarifies by stating, “the initial quality score is a default quality score for everyone who has used this word before you. That’s an important benchmark as you can compare your quality score to your overall competition.  After you add several keywords, run a keyword report and save the quality score info for those new keywords.”

The question is, how do we know when we get our real quality scores?

“After the new keywords added (the ones with the poor quality scores) have accrued enough data for Google to make a statically significant decision about what your actual quality score is (which could be a day to a few weeks depending on how many impressions, clicks, and when Google crawls your landing page) then your keywords are updated with your actual quality score.

Run another keyword report on your actual quality score.

Compare this data to the original quality score.”

It all makes sense now.  A simple comparison within a month’s time could possibly differentiate us from our competitors.

A search engine marketing firm is able to handle all of these updates and comparisons for you, especially if you start with higher quality scores and then see them drop to lower scores down the road.

Is Google Adwords Quality Score Exaggerated?

PPC Management companies are always talking about it, always fearing it and always wondering what the next change will be.  Of course, I am referring to Google Adwords Quality Score.  Advertisers may very well be starting to see Google Adwords as a rival instead of a profitable advertising platform.

To sum it up, Google Adwords Quality Scored is mainly based off of the relevancy between your keywords, ad groups, text ads, landing page quality and load time, historical click through rate and overall account history.  Every advertiser will have their own success rates and opinions on quality score, but I truly believe that overall account history is the prime factor.

I read an interesting and I may even call it a brave article written by guest blogger, Shawn Livengood, on ppchero.com.

In the article, Livengood refers to Google’s Quality Score as “overhyped” and claims that “the reality is that if you’re running a relevant, well organized PPC campaign, you shouldn’t even have to think about your quality score.”

Livengood also claims that his theory on Google’s Quality Score is that “it’s slightly comforting to get a “grade” on how you’re doing in your AdWords account.  With so many different numbers and statistics flying around in your account, it’s easy to focus on one specific number to determine how things are going.  The only real “score” you need is one (or all) of these three: total conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.”

Livengood is basically stating that if people want your product or service and you are targeting them appropriately, then you’ll convert them.  If people don’t find what they are looking for, then they’re simply not going to convert.

I think that Livengood makes a valid point, conversions don’t lie, but in today’s world competition is more fierce than ever.  Whether we like it or not, we are not going to get our ads ranking with our competitors if Google is ranking us in the “poor” category.  I found it a bit contradictory that Livengood praised a strong, well-structured, relevant pay per click campaign, yet also stated that Quality Score is “overhyped”.

In my experience, the only times I have seen an online marketing campaigns perform with success that have not been structured around Google’s Quality Score are when the campaigns have so much history that it almost seems to wipe everything else out completely. I feel as if you can put together a beautifully structured and relevant campaign, but click history is the element that is missing in new campaigns and the piece of the Quality Score puzzle that we strive for to complete the package.

CSS/XHTML vs. Regular HTML for Landing Page Quality Score

Although we have not been able to find documentation on this, it seems that Google Adwords tends to favor regular (basic) HTML landing pages vs. modern CSS/XHTML landing pages. We have done tests where the exact same META data and content in a landing page will have a range of Poor (CSS/XHTML version) to Great (basic HTML version) quality scores. Considering this can make or break a campaign, try experimenting a bit. If you have a modern site, you may want to try to build a separate folder for basic HTML landing pages and see how those fare vs. your regular site pages.

A search marketing firm should be able to handle all of this in house for you.