In the quest to create a truly epic pay per click campaign, our intrepid search marketer often runs the gamut of keywords, from the obvious to the creative to the downright silly.

But no matter how stupid “paper click” might sound as a keyword, there’s at least one person out there who’s going to search that exact phrase, right?

Right?

Oftentimes, depending on how enthusiastic the search marketer might be, an account can accumulate hundreds of keywords that never get any impressions at all, leaving one to wonder: is it really worth it, keeping all these zero impression keywords?

Maybe.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to cull any non-performing keywords, especially since a large number of them make it more difficult to manage your account. For the most part, they’re really not adding anything of value, since their click through rate is technically at zero percent.

On the other hand, a CTR of zero percent doesn’t necessarily lower your Quality Score, at least according to our Google sources. While CTR plays a major role in determining a keyword’s Quality Score, it’s not the only factor, not by a long shot. The historical performance of the keyword across Google’s entire system, the past performance of your display URL, the overall performance of your account—all of these go into the equation that churns out your Quality Score.

So while it’s safe to assume that most zero impression keywords are clogging up your account, it’s the Quality Score that ultimately decides whether a keyword is worth keeping or not. If the Quality Score is less than five, or otherwise significantly lower than the rest, your best course of action is to delete the keyword.

And if the Quality Score is good? It definitely doesn’t hurt to let it hang around a little while longer. A high quality keyword is better than nothing, right?

Right.

Ad Quality, Adwords, Google, Google AdWords, negative keywords, PPC, Quality Score

I recently read an interesting article posted on SearchEngineWatch.com by Mark Jackson – “Google AdWords Quality Score — That’s Old-School for SEO”  http://searchenginewatch.com/3631651

The driving point of this article is that Google’s Quality Score is going to be base in-part on the content of the landing page.  If you are bidding on a keyword “Big Fatty Hamburger”, you better make sure that you have a Big Fatty Hamburger content-focused landing page. 

The article implies that this move by Google is very similar to SEO where you optimize your site around the keywords you wish to show up for in organic search.  Makes sense, right?

I too was under the same impression until I asked a question to our Account Specialist….   Their response is quite interesting:

“While this could help with their website conversion rate, it wouldn’t really affect their site quality score. In its current iteration the site quality component is geared more toward demoting sites that offer a poor user experience or less than above board business model, rather than rewarding more relevant sites. Basically, that component is either neutral or varying degrees of negative. There is no bump given for things like keywords on the landing page and the like. Let me know if you have other questions about this.”

That being said, if raising your quality score is your goal, making individual landing pages for each of your keywords is not going to cut it.  Google wants a positive user experience and as long as your site is not misleading, has a privacy policy, link to the homepage, and a proper website layout, then you get a 10 out of 10 (for this aspect of the quality score calculations.)  Your time is better spent a/b testing ad creative than creating or paying a web developer for dozens of unique pages.  It is important to note that these comments are based on addressing the Quality Score.  We believe very strongly that Landing Page testing is an integral part of a building a successful PPC marketing campaign – but the intention and focus should be based on increasing the Conversion Rate, not the Quality Score.

Landing Page Optimization, Quality Score

Google has recently released some news of upcoming changes that you should prepare for. The topics of discussion are the improvements of how they calculate the infamous Quality Score and the rank position of your Ads. So let’s jump into it…

As of now Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the most influential factor in weighing an ads quality score. When an Ad has a good Clickthrough rate then Google will reward you with a good Quality Score. But, the problem as of now is that unfortunately the position of your Ad is a major key factor in your CTR, if you’re at the bottom of the page you will have the same amount of impressions as an Ad in position 1, but won’t receive as many clicks. And that’s where the vicious cycle begins, a lower CTR, a lower Quality Score, and a higher cost per click. But Google has announced that within the coming days they will be updating the Quality Score algorithm to take ad position into consideration. This will not only improve the accuracy of Quality Scores, but also ensure that ads compete evenly for position based on their quality and bid.

Moving onto High Quality Ads, Google is also working on the way they determine what ads will be shown in the yellow region above the organic search results. Given the power of those positions Google wants to ensure that the Ads that are being shown are of “High Quality”. They say Ads will have to meet a certain quality threshold to be considered for these positions. Also it is stated that Ads with a high quality can even jump over other ads to be shown in this region. Google says that this will ensure that quality plays an even more important role in which ad is being shown on top.

Now these changes have not yet occurred but you should be prepared for them in the next week or so. Keep an eye on the Adwords Blog as they will be updating when the changes are in effect. So since the quality of your Ad will be even more important than before here are a couple tips to consider.

• Spend some time researching the keywords you are bidding on and see what your competition is doing. If you can make your Ad stand out from the rest you will see a dramatic increase in your CTR and Quality Score. Don’t be afraid to test different types of Ads and see what works best for you. Use “[]” “()” “/” “:” “-“ “©” “™” to further increase the uniqueness of your Ad.

• Another way to stand out from your competition is to test Ad length. You are restricted to 25 characters in your topic and 35 in both description lines. Common practice is to use all characters and give as much information as you can. This is not necessarily a bad thing but if you test a short Ad it will contribute to you standing out from all the other Ads and can increase your CTR.

EDIT: Changes are in effect as of 11/3/2008.

Ad Quality, Adwords, Quality Score

Earlier this month Google implemented changes to the mysterious “Quality Score”. To briefly summarize the changes, Google states that they have incorporated three main improvements:

1)     Quality Score is now more accurate because it is calculated at the
time of each search query.

Real time evaluation is an excellent way to keep PPC ads that are highly relevant in top positions. For us advertisers this means that quality is more important than ever. This improvement will help those whose who are following the quality rules, but hurt those who already have a low quality score. 

2)     Keywords are no longer marked ‘inactive for search’ — all keywords
are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query.

Google is giving a chance to those low performing keywords. You may have a keyword that is has not been clicked on in a month because it is irrelevant, Now instead of blocking that keyword, Google will still allow your ad to run, and wait until someone’s search is relevant to your product or service.

3)     ‘First page bid estimates’ replace ‘minimum bids’ in your account –
providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers.

It is pretty obvious that ads that show on the first page receive more traffic, and this is a convenient function for us advertisers who want to know how much it costs to be on the first page.

One other change that I have found particularly nice is the addition of the numerical rating system for quality score. Instead of ranking a keyword as “ok” Google now gives a 6/10 rating which is easy understand. They also include a “Details and recommendations” that gives us hints to what we are doing wrong.

As Google continues to make changes in Adwords, it is good to remember that the basic measurements of quality score remain the same. No matter how quickly quality score is calculated, or how fancy the Analysis graphic becomes, don’t forget your quality score is still based on the following:

·         Keyword CTR

·         Ad text relevance

·         Historical keyword performance

·         Landing pages

·         Website Relevancy

Quality Score