If you are new to AdWords, or trying to break through whatever AdWords ceiling you are currently butting your head against, I highly encourage you to treat Quality Score with the respect it deserves.
I believe Quality Score will become more and more important. Google continues to try and reward those that advertise in a way most relevant to the divined intent of the searcher.
Here is what I see so often.
- AdWords Account Opened.
- Obvious Keywords Entered
- Bidding Strategy is Arbitrary due to lack of Conversion and/or Quality Score Strategy.
- Poorly Chosen Keywords, and Ads result in low Clickthrough Rates which kills Quality Score.
- Estimated First Page Bid and Cost per Click go through the roof.
- The new or weary AdWordian is upset and confused – Thinks Google is a Rip Off (which is unfortunate, I certainly do not think that is true.)
Am I right you AdWords Pros? Don’t you see this over and over?
Be targeted Neophytes! Think Quality Score, not volume of clicks, as you build or rehabilitate your AdWords account.
As you are starting out, be hyper aware of your Quality Score and clickthrough rates. Build your account Quality Score by focusing initially on those things that AdWords is telling you are most relevant as represented by “OK”, or better yet, “Great”, quality scores.
You may not agree with your Quality Score grades. You may even be totally baffled by them. But follow Google’s lead until your account Quality Score is strong enough that you can start pulling up the Quality Score of individual terms that you feel are relevant in spite of their initial Quality Score grade.
It is still an imperfect science, but Google does have an amazing asset in the volume of data they can process when it comes to divining the intent of the average searcher for any given term. Let Google help you succeed by relying on AdWords Quality Score as your first indicator of how well you are targeting searcher intent.
-Tom Hale, AdWords Specialist
