Have you ever found that your best keywords which are paying back in gold and getting a very good number of conversions and at a very acceptable cost suddenly become “Inactive for search” and you now need to pay Google £5.00 or something ridiculous per click to reactivate it.

Believe me I have felt the pain as well. But here are a few things that helped me and I hope are going to help you overcome this problem.

The first thing we need to understand is how the Google AdWords Quality Score works, and what are the factors that affect it.

Here is how Google defines Quality Score:

“Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query.”

I think the main thing that we need to understand is that a keyword’s Quality Score affects your minimum bid so the better your Quality Score is the lower your minimum bid is going to be and vice versa.

There are three levels of Quality Score which Google uses to rank your keywords - Great, OK and Poor.

Now that we’ve covered the basics let’s take a look at some factors that affect your Quality Score:

• The CTR that you are achieving on the particular keyword and in its AdGroup
• The keyword density of your adverts
• The relevance of your landing page to your keyword
• The relevance of the keyword to the products/services you are selling
• The structure of your AdGroups and how similar the keywords in it are
• The historical performance of your entire account
• The historical performance for this keyword in the market
• Other factors that Google keeps a secret

Now that we have reviewed the factors that affect the Quality Score I am going to provide you with quick tips of how you can improve your keywords Quality Score.

Structure your account correctly. Don’t put keywords that are too different in the same AdGroup, instead group keywords in logically related groups and have adverts that are directly related to your keywords.  Once you have 2 keywords that are getting a lot of impressions (over 100 a day) in the same AdGroup, separate it into separate AdGroups so you can have a relevant ad for each.

Use the keyword in your adverts as many times as you can, but bear in mind that your advert needs to make sense. Preferably write it in the title too, unless your product is an invention or something which won’t get many searches in which case you need to explain your product/service in the title and put keywords only in the description lines or you’ll get lots of irrelevant clicks.

Point keywords to pages on your site that are directly related to them. This will also do wonders for your conversion rate.

Use negative keywords. This is a must for any account – call us on 0208 819 2632 if you need help. If you’re not already using negative keywords, I can guarantee that we can massively improve your results.

Use matching options. Edit your landing page so it is focused on the keywords that your are using. This means not just pointing ads for shoes to the shoes page. This means creating a leather shoes page for your leather shoes keyword and ad.

Make sure your keywords are relevant to the products/services that you are offering. If you’re selling cat food, don’t use the keyword “cat”.

Get your free consultation and see how we would improve your Google AdWords ROI today!