Optimizing for Google AdWords' New Quality Score System

by Greg Ives - KeywordRanking

In the coming weeks, Google will release a new method for deciding when your ads show up. Out with the old system of "on hold, in trial and disabled" keywords and in with "the quality based system," where keywords are either active or inactive.

How Google will derive the Quality Score:

"New keywords will no longer be disabled or have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold. Instead, your keyword will trigger ads as long as it has a high enough Quality Score (determined by your keyword's CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors) and maximum CPC."

Because there are more exposed aspects of the algorithm, you have more control over where your ads appear in the ranking.

Think the Quality System sounds simple? Think again.

There are several issues that will be challenging for marketers.

Inexperienced advertisers will likely increase their max CPC to retain their paid search rankings. This only provides a short term solution that will drain your budget and leave your ad costing too much.

Increasing CPC is one thing you can do in order to attain active status, but the correct thing to do prior to spending more money per click is to improve your quality score through optimization.

In addition, inexperienced advertisers are likely to erase existing keywords that aren't activated but could easily become so by changing the structure of the account, budgeting, etc (see below). This could lose them some easy return on keywords that convert.

To keep your keywords activated an experienced agency will:

* alter the structure of the account, campaigns, ad groups and keywords
* alter campaign budgeting
* refine content targeting
* optimize for your max CPC
* select proper keyword matching
* ensure rotation of quality ad text
* proper keyword selection
* build out campaign negative keywords
* implement content website exclusion

Google's new quality system will make it harder still for inexperienced marketers to gain an advantage over experienced paid search agencies. Watch for more businesses to hire agencies to manage to Google AdWords' more complex quality score rather than just the click through rate.

Because of the coming changes it's all the more important for you to get started now for your holiday paid search campaign.

Greg Ives is the Paid Search Director for Websourced's KeywordRanking.

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