BradPace.com

How the paid search systems ranks ads has a long history of changes. The ranking algorithms of paid search have gotten increasingly complex over the years. Now it is more complicated than ever. Not only do they look at the maximum bid amount, the click through rate and the quality of the ad but they look at campaign history and landing page quality as well. On top of that they look at your overall account history and quality. Then on Google the top 2 ads have a different ranking algorithm all together.

First there are actually 2 types of quality scores. One that affects the minimum bid and determines if the ad is on or off. And then there is one that affects the bids or the rank in which the ads show up. There are 2 types of quality when it comes to an ad. One is the quality of the keyword and how good your history is with that word (or group of words). Then the quality and relevancy of the landing page. This is automated with a crawler by Google. Yahoo and Microsoft are expected to soon follow with an automated crawler of the landing pages.

It is important to understand what the quality score actually affects. Lets look at Google. First the quality score affects ad placement on Google search. Second it affects ad placement on Google content. Third it affects all bid amounts. The premium spots (the 1 or 2 ads in the yellow box at the very top of the page above the results) are ranked by the overall quality score and then actually ranked by maximum bid amounts.

So the first question is whether the spider can crawl your landing pages. If not, you are sure to get a bad quality score. And can the crawler actually read the content on the page? Then does the site look like a “bad” site? Does it look like a spam site or a site with little content?

Here are some tips to improve your quality scores

• Run a keyword report in Google and then sort it by minimum bid. This will show some trends and problems that can be worked on.
• Reorganize your ad groups and make them smaller. So they will be more targeted and have more relevance to your ads.
• Test, test and retest your ad copy. The CTR is still the cornerstone of the quality score!
• Test landing pages and make sure they match up with your keywords and ads.
• Is your suggested minimum bid over $1? Then you have landing page problems in your quality score.
• Ignore the quality score. If you are getting traffic and results don’t worry what your quality score actually says. Focus on the user experience and the quality score will follow (so Google says).
• Test ads by using different match types. Jonathan Mendez from Otto Digital (an Offermatica company) claims this is one of the best things you can do to improve your results.
• The worst problem with most campaigns is simply poor keyword selection. Make sure you have the right keywords in your campaigns.

I have been intimidated by the new quality score algorithm. But it is not as complicated as it may seem. It just takes more work and more optimization to your account to do it right.