One of the key factors in account management which is crucial to better cost optimization is the quality score. Quality score (also referred to as quality index) is the measure of the relevancy of your landing page and ad copy to the advertised keyword. Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN (Bing) employ this score in all text based advertising in their sponsored links section. This ensures searchers to not only see relevant results to their search query in the organic results, but also in the sponsored ads as well.
As it has many benefits to searchers, advertisers must also be aware of the impact it has on their campaign and specifically their budget. Each search engine has their own criteria to calculate the quality score of the advertiser and generally follow the following equation:
Maximum Bid X Quality Score (Index) = Ad Rank
Some factors which are considered for quality score are:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Relevance of the Keyword to its Ad Group
- Landing Page Quality
- Historical Performance
- Landing Page Load Time
So what does this mean to advertisers? A lower quality score means an advertiser will pay more for a click than another advertiser who bids as high but has a higher quality score. Advertisers who disregard quality score in their day to day management of their campaigns may be running a very expensive campaign which is costing them a lot more than what they can be paying if they had better quality scores. For larger accounts, this can mean a potential loss of hundreds of valuable clicks and poor market penetration.
To ensure campaigns are being managed efficiently, an advertiser should make it a habit to optimize their campaign for better quality scores. This means spending a bit more time writing better ad copy, choosing effective landing pages, and conducting more thorough keyword research. These are all basic best practices to run more effective campaigns regardless of quality scores.
For further information on quality score and how it affects your campaign, please visit the help section within your advertising platform (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Adcenter, etc.) or speak to an account manager at Searchlinqs.
