Quality Score Elements: Part 1 Landing Page Experience
What is a quality score?
When looking through your Google Ads campaign, you may come across something called a “quality score” that is applied to both your text ads and keywords. This value is scored on a rating from 1 - 10 and gives you a little more insight as to how Google defines a good quality ad running in your campaign. While it can be a little daunting when you see a score of 3/10, it only means that some areas of improvement can help your overall campaign performance.
Quality score is not something that needs to have your full attention at all times. Instead, a more productive way of looking at it is through understanding how each component can help better your ads through user experience and Google recommendations.
What are the three components:
Three main components are considered when Google gives your ads or keywords a ranking. These three measurements are:
Landing page experience
Expected CTR (click-through rate)
Ad relevance
For this blog, we are going to be focusing on the landing page experience, but don’t worry! This is a 3 part series breaking down quality scores on a fundamental level. If you would like to learn more about expected CTR and ad relevance, please visit our other blogs!
What is a landing page?
A landing page in your ads campaign is the page on your website where users will be directed once they click on your ads. For example, if you are running keywords related to anxiety therapy, then you would want to send people looking for those services to a page that is directly related to the keywords they may have been searching for.
Difference between web page and landing page
The landing page is not to be confused with any individual web page on your website. In simple terms, all landing pages are web pages, but not all web pages are landing pages. A web page can be several things ranging from products, blogs, about us biographies, etc. while the landing page is being used particularly for the ads themselves.
A good rule of thumb to follow is that when you are advertising for specific services, sending users to a page related to that service would provide a more concrete conversion funnel compared to sending them to a home or contact page.
Digging into the landing page experience:
What does landing page experience mean?
In the world of Google Ads, landing pages can make all the difference in getting quality leads to your business. Whether you are looking for more form submissions, more product sales, or more foot traffic to your business, the landing page is the first impression that users get once they click on your ads.
How is it measured?
When Google gives you a score for a user's landing page experience, it essentially tells you how relevant the information on the page matches the keywords that you are advertising for. In the back end, Google uses a mixture of automation and real-life evaluation to determine the score for your landing page experience.
What is Google specifically looking for?
As of now, there is no definitive answer to what Google measures and is looking for when they score a landing page experience. Because of this, we can only speculate about the different aspects that make up a good landing page and improve on them individually. Here are some things to consider if you are trying to maximize and improve your landing page experience score:
Keywords: If you are advertising for specific services, then it would make sense to ensure that the keywords you are bidding for are mentioned throughout the landing page. Going back to the anxiety therapy example, if you are bidding for the keyword “anxiety therapy” then both “anxiety” and “therapy” should be mentioned throughout the page that you are sending users to.
Loading time: It may be something that is taken for granted, but the amount of time that it takes to load your website may play a part in how your quality score is measured. The longer that it takes to load the page, the less interest users will have in getting that information from your website, leading them to move on to the next search result.
Relevance to ads: Because keywords are so important, the next logical step would be to make sure that the ad text you have written matches and is relevant to the landing page you are sending users. If your ads are centered around depression therapy, but the users are landing on an anxiety therapy page then Google may not deem your page relevant enough to be useful or informational for users who are clicking on your ads.
Time on site: The amount of time that people spend on your website is an important factor in understanding how they are engaging with your content. This data can help you identify user behaviors and patterns, like which pages they are staying on the longest, which they are only scrolling through, and how that may play a role in your ads or conversions.
What can I do for my ads?
How to implement a good landing page strategy if you are looking to improve your landing page experience, then implementing good SEO tactics into the copy of your page could be the first step to letting Google know that your page is valuable to the campaign you are running. Some tips include:
Make sure your headers include the keywords you are bidding for
Integrating a variety of keywords into the copy
For example, the “therapy” keyword can also be expanded by using “counseling”, “mental health resources”, and “therapists”
Have a minimum of 600 - 800 words on the page that describes your service
Create a call to actions that include your keywords
Go through your landing pages and test for loading time/speed
Check your analytics for insights on how long people are spending on your page
Try including some on-page SEO tactics to boost your overall web presence
Add images and videos to the pages you are using for ads
Conclusion: Small improvements can go a long way
When it comes to improving your quality score, implementing only one of these tips could help make a difference, not only in your quality score but in how a user interacts with your content. Ad text and keyword bidding are all crucial to the foundation of a campaign, but the small changes can help build brand recognition, user engagement, and overall trust in your company to provide the right services that users are looking for.
If you are in the process of learning how to build a better quality score or improve your landing page experience, feel free to reach out to our digital marketing experts to learn more!
