The Quality Score Checklist

Target Readers: Beginner - Intermediate

Since the changes to quality score (QS) many people have reported sporadic changes in their quality scores, now reported out of 10. Some have argued that the quality score is irrelevant, which is partly true (I will discuss this in a future post).

Whatever the case I thought it might be beneficial to create a checklist that you should go through when trying to determine why your QS is too low or not has high as you would like it to be.

1. Tightly themed Adgroups - the first thing you ought to determine is if your adgroups are as tightly themed as possible. This may even mean having one keyword in an adgroup. Look carefully at the keywords in each of your adgroup, if you can think of a way to break them down into two or more groups that this will only help your quality score. For a detailed explanation see Sebastian Graham's blog post on the topic.
2. Use your keywords in your ad - Now that you have tightly themed keywords, make sure you use each keyword in your ad. As a guidline your keyword should appear at least once in the title, in each description line and then in the display URL. As Google bolds the searched term in your ads make sure that, where possible, the keyword appears as the first word in the title.
3. Use keywords on your landing page - Once you have tighly themed adgroups with your keywords in your ads, make sure that your landing page has the keywords in the titles and that the "keyword density" is high (but not so high as to be unreadable or unengaging to users)

If you ensure that your campaigns follow these three principles, your quality score should be in the 7-10 region. Some though may find that their QS does not improve. Why?

It could be one of many things, but the solution to a common problem is to increase the "user experience". This relates primarily to your landing page. I would reccomend reading through this post on the official Google blog. My next blog post will dissect and translate this post and reccomend practical ways in which you can improve the "user experience" on your landing pages. Keep an eye out for it!

Checklist Summary

• Do you have tightly themed Adgroups?
• Can you break existing Adgroups into two or more adgroups?
• Do you use your keyword in your text ad?
• Does your keyword appear at least once in the two description lines, the title and display URL?
• Does your landing page have the keyword in the URL?
• Is your keyword in the title of your landing page?
• Do you have a good keywords density on your landing page?

A Note:
I have started to write which readers I am targetting with each post. I understand that some of you may be at different levels and so I will try and accomodate for all readers experience and knowledge. This post was aimed at beginner to intermediate Adwords users.

Picture Perfect.

I currently have a client who is promoting a cleaning product that we refer to as a "chemical breakthough". On our landing page we use various combinations for the first image, above the fold, that searchers see. Two examples are shown below, one relating to the "chemical breakthrough" and the other a "Before and After" shot. Can you guess which landing page converted better?

The landing page with the image on the right converted significantly better than the one on the left. The reason is because it showed what the product does or can do, it would be relevant to the search term and it addresses the user's problem much better than the first. Keeping in mind that both landing pages used "Before and After" pictures below the fold (yet one did better than the other), you can see the importance of the first image users see.

The Lesson
Make sure that the image that users first see when they arrive on your landing page is attention grabbing and related to the search they just performed. If someone searched for "new mazda BT-50" then make sure the first image they see is a Mazda BT-50. If somone searched for "African Thatch Hut" then make sure your first image is an African Thatch Hut.

Ask Yourself?
What is the first image people see when then arrive on my landing page?
Do I have a unique image for each adgroup?

Sidenote: this post is more relevant to businesses who are promoting products. Service based businesses should achieve the same outcome with solution based titles. (A post for another day).

Form-ula For Success.

Something that many people don't spend enough time thinking about is their contact form. A well designed contact form can make a huge difference on the success of a campaign. The best way to illustrate this would be with an example. Here's what one of my clients' contact form looked like prior to making any changes:

This contact form requires he user to fill in a lot of fields that may be unnecessary. With the attention span of users becoming shorter and shorter, you really should only have what is necessary. Here's what the form looked like after I made a few changes:

Notice how much shorter it is? As you can see I changed the title of the form from "Your Details" to a sentence that includes the call to action. Only the required fields are in the second version. Why would you need their address when you will be calling them to follow up on enquiries? Rather than including every state in Australia, I have included the only two states that we are targeting.

Of course your form could be shortened even further to ask only for contact name and telephone number, which would no doubt have a positive affect on conversions.

Ask Yourself
Does your contact form have unecessary fields?
Can you shorten your form?
If your users have to select their country or state or province, do you include the most important states at the top of the list? (If you are tagetting USA and UK, don't make users scroll to the bottom of a drop down list to select their country! Put them at the top of the list.)

Keep It Simple Stupid!

It's no coincidence that the first post on this blog is about landing pages. In the end the success or otherwise of a campaign depends on how well you convert clicks into sales or opt-ins. It is really important that you nail the design of the landing page.

In many ways designing a page is like being an architect and as Seth Godin decribes it, architecture is "the intentional arrangement of design elements to get a certain result." In our case this is arranging ad copy and images, among other things, in a way that is most likely to generate conversions.

It's easy to fall into the trap of having fancy websites with flash intros and images galore, but the fact is, in most cases, this does not lead to good outcomes. Take one of my current clients. His website is filled with lots and lots of flash and images. Take a look for yourself! That intro takes a while to load? Then when you get to the site, what's that you see, more flash!*

The problem is this affects load time and ultimately quality score. It's also imperative that you keep your landing page as simple as possible with a clear call to action and as few distractions as possible. There's a principle I like to stick to that helps create killer landing pages and that is KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.

As Wiki describes it:

"The KISS principle (acronym for "Keep It Simple, Stupid") states that design simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided. It serves as a useful principle in a wide array of disciplines, such as software development, animation, journalism, photography, engineering, and strategic planning."

The Lesson
Remember to keep your landing page design simple. As a rule, every element should contribute to conversion. That is every image you use and every word that you use must make the user more likely to answer your call to action.

I recommend to all clients that it's preferable to have two websites. A main site that has lots of information and images and yes, even a bit of flash and also a mini-site built primarily for Adwords with simplicity and clear goals (to make a sale/lead) the key.

Ask Yourself:
Are my landing pages as simple as they can be?
Are there any elements that are just aesthetic?
Do I need to develop a "Made-For-Adwords" site?

Of course if you need help with creating landing pages that work feel free to contact me and discuss how I may be of assistance.



*As a sidenote the client is thrilled by all that flash! Once loaded it looks great but when attention spans are shortening and people are becoming more web savvy, a slow loading site can lead to only one outcome, a bounce!