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Why Google's Quality Score is Important for Your Next Internet Business Marketing Campaign

Guest post by: Wendy Suto

Article Overview: If you're advertising with Google's AdWords, then gaining a high quality score can do wonders for your Internet marketing campaign. You'll get higher rankings and better deals. Here's how to get great quality scores.

Why Google's Quality Score is Important for Your Next Internet Business Marketing Campaign

If you've looked into starting a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign with Google's AdWords, you may have heard the term "quality score" bandied about if you've consulted to anyone involved Internet business marketing. Quality scores, like their name suggests, are important if you want to craft a successful Internet business marketing campaign. First, we'll explain what quality score is. Part 1: Why PPC Quality Scores are Good for You, Good for Users, and Good for Search Engines

When you start an Internet business marketing campaign with AdWords, Google will over time develop and assign you a quality score for every keyword you target. Targeted keywords are words and phrase that, when entered as search terms by users, you want your ads to appear near.

There are serious advantages to receiving a high quality score on your Internet business marketing campaign. Your ads will appear on the front page of search results more often (40% of Web users don't go beyond the first page of search results), and you'll have to pay less for ads that target certain keywords.

In short, quality score is a dynamic measurement based on how well Google thinks you're doing with your ads. Have great ads that people actually click on? Then you'll get good quality scores for future ads.

Does this make Google the Internet version of a stern high school teacher, grading us on our work? A little bit. But the good news is that it's not too difficult to become a teacher's pet, even if you did struggle in sophomore chem.

So how does one achieve a great quality score for their Internet business marketing campaign? Like many things orchestrated by search engines, the formulas and algorithms for quality score are kept under a huge lock and key in the bowels of Google headquarters (actually, that's probably not true, but it is kept pretty secret).

But since Google wants the highest-quality text ads possible, they do reveal some hints on what makes a good ad. So there are some guidelines about what one can do to earn a good quality score.

Achieving a high quality score for a PPC Internet business marketing campaign can be boiled down to two simple things that Google wants. Think of it as a two way street:

They want Web users to find the advertisers offering the exact things the users are looking for. They want advertisers to reach users who are searching for what the advertisers are offering.

When this happens, users will receive PPC ads that are relevant to their searches and to their interests. They visit sites offering the goods or services they are looking for. They purchase from the PPC advertisers, who then get more revenue to spend on future Google AdWords Internet business marketing campaigns.

Everybody's happy.

It wasn't always like this. In the Paleolithic days of PPC, the best ad slots went to the highest bidders, regardless of whether the ad was relevant. This frustrated users. And frustrated users are less apt to buy things. It also frustrated Internet business marketing advertisers with relevant ads, because their good ads weren't getting placed anywhere prominent on the search results page if they didn't bid high enough.

The highest bidders didn't efficiently reach their audience. And search engines weren't getting the revenue they expected. So while quality score may sound mysterious and vague, there really is a solid reason for its existence.

Part 2: How to Start a Successful Internet Business Marketing Plan with AdWords and Get a High Quality Score

So the next question is: in order to get a good quality score, do you need to dive into a plethora of data and analytics?

Here's some good news: you don't.

Building and executing a good AdWords Internet business marketing plan that grabs and brings in visitors to your site takes time and practice to perfect, but it's not hard to get started.

Here are the four steps that will lay the foundation for a PPC Internet business marketing campaign that achieves good quality scores:

1. Split keywords into more targeted ad groups

Google offers a free tool called AdWords Editor. It's great for managing your AdWords campaign. You can edit your AdWords offline, if you want, and outside of your browser. Starting your Internet business marketing campaign well-organized will make it easier to see what keywords are performing well and what ones aren't.

2. Create relevant ad copy

Create a great ad that's relevant to the keyword or keywords. That means no spamming, no tricks and no other goofiness. Tell the user what you're offering in simple (but persuasive) language. Easy, right? OK, we know it's not. But practice makes perfect.

3. Optimize creative

When you turn an AdWords option known as "ad serving optimization" off, then you'll be able to test the success of ads on a more individual level. That means that you can find the ads that work the best, and jettison or modify the ads that under perform. Then you can tweak the best performing ads and see if you can boost the CTR (click-through rate, or the percentage of users who click on the ad when it appears).

4. Experiment with matching options

Keywords can either be marked as having a broad match or an exact match. The broad match is the default option. That means that if your keyword is "pineapple juice," then your ad will appear when users type in pineapple and juice in any order, or along with other words. Phrase match means that your ad will only come up if the user typed in quotation marks, as in "pineapple juice." Exact match is simply a phrase match but without any other words searched for. If you fool around with these options, you may stand a better chance at getting your ad viewed by the right users.

Part 3: How to Build a Landing Page Internet Business Marketing Campaign

But quality score doesn't just end at the ad. Google takes your ad's landing page into account when it's determining quality score. The landing page is the page that the ad links to, or in other words, the page that the user "lands" on when she clicks on the ad link. The landing page must be relevant. If you're selling pineapple juice, then the ad can't lead to a landing page offering a free credit report. Here are some other, less-obvious things that you can do to your landing page that will help improve your quality score.

1. SEO

Having a Webpage that ranks high in Google's search rankings will look good. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process for streamlining a Website and its pages for maximum search engine rankings. There are many things that go into good and proper SEO, much too much for this article. But the basics are simple: targeted keywords and earning relevancy by building powerful incoming links to your Website.

2. Content

Google likes content. That is, unique text, video and pictures. A Website that's selling a good that has a just a couple of simple, descriptive paragraphs of text will receive a higher quality score than a Website that simply has the product's name and a little "order now" button. Offer online shoppers something to read or view, and you'll get a good quality score boost.

3. Be honest with user's information

There are plenty of cookies that are OK, but don't try to scrape too much info from your visitor. Google will blacklist any Website that contains malicious tracking devices or malware. That's something you don't want to risk. Be honest with what information you are collecting from your users.

4. Have a page that's easy to navigate

Google likes clean, easy-to-read Websites. Add too many bells and whistles to your Website and you may find your quality scores suffering. While some Website tools are necessary for e-commerce, you should carefully consider each additional tool as a part of your Internet business marketing campaign and decide if it's absolutely needed or if it's more likely to get in the way of the user's experience.

Most Internet business marketing experts agree that AdWords is still a work in progress. Google's not done tweaking it yet. But it's unlikely that the tenants outlined here will change. That's because these tips are just the beginning. Anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of the AdWords Internet business marketing campaign can find a wealth of information both online and even in the bookstore.

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Article Tags: business marketing campaign, business marketing online, search circus, search engine optimization



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