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Optimizing For Quality Score Is A Best Practice, Except When It’s Not. Here’s Why:

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are mostly text-based ads that pull up at the top or in highly visible spots when performing searches on search engines such as Google and Bing. They are based on specific keywords related to your website or business. The quality score of your ad campaign can affect where your ad ranks and how often it shows up in searches. Most PPC management strategies focus on improving quality score, but that may not always be the best proactive in every case.

The quality score of an ad campaign or account can be an important factor overall, but it’s hardly the sole focus. Its goal is to make sure the people performing the searches are given relevant ads and links. A quality score can reveal relevance, landing page experience and the expected click-through rate (the percentage of clicks an ad receives versus the number of times it appears). These can be important, but if your click-through rate is low, it could be because your keywords are not specific enough. That’s just one example of affecting the overall quality score.

 

If one of your goals in your PPC management is to increase quality score, make sure not to do it at the expense of other factors. For example, an ad with a high click-through rate (which can help improve the quality score) might not bring a high conversion on your website. You might not be getting customers out of all those clicks. If getting customers or sales is your goal, then you would probably be willing to have a lower quality score on an ad that converted higher on your website.

 

In another example, if you want to optimize your ad for location, the ad may include the specific area. An ad with “coffee shop Los Angeles” may get a higher click-through rate than an ad with “coffee shop LA.” It’s a slight difference, but can matter depending on the people you want to attract. Again, focus on your goal. A high quality score can certainly help your ad perform better, but that’s not the only factor to focus on.