possible Quality Scores ?

The cost per click (cpc) that the advertiser pays for a keyword is directly related to its QS. Craig Danuloff has crunched a lot of numbers to show the effect of QS on the cpc. Briefly, a QS of 7 means that you are paying the standard price for each click. For a QS below 7 you are penalised eg a QS of 4 means you will be charged a 75% Premium. However a Quality Score of 1.0 means that you get a discount of 30%. So what are the factors that Google takes into account when calculating the Quality Score for each Keyword/Ad combination. For the Search Network Google lists 8 factors. However the most significant is the Click Through Rate or CTR – specifically the CTR for the Exact Match version of the keyword.  Siddharth Shah has crunched some different numbers and his show the correlation between CTR and Quality Score. The higher the CTR the higher the QS. So, a keyword CTR in the range of 2 or 3% will get you a QS of 7 but you will need a *much* higher CTR to get the magic of QS 8, 9 or 10 discounts. Looking at my own keywords with a QS of 10 ( not as many as I would like sadly )  all of them have an Exact Match CTR of over 30%. So no surprise, Google does not easily give away AdWords discounts. Typically you will only get that kind of CTR on very specialise keywords or Brand Terms.

One way to improve your CTR for a keyword is to lower the number of Impressions that do not receive a click. Identifying possible Negative keywords that will help you is an ongoing task that pays dividends. One way to find search terms that on Broad Match trigger your ad is to look in the Search Query Report. For some accounts this now shows Impressions that get no Clicks. Another way to is to enter the keyword as a search term and then check the terms shown in Google Suggest. Also some terms shown in Related Searches under More Search tools can give suitable negatives.

Note that Google makes public a linear QS scale of 1 to 10. However it is almost certain than internally they use a log scale such as the one used for Page Rank where one number is vastly greater than the previous one eg 2 is 100 times greater than 1 and so on. This means QS will in reality cover a very wide range. So when you reach the magic 7 keep improving the CTR as it is very likely that Google has a more refined internal scale and even though you cannot get above 7 your ad position and cpc may will continue to improve.

Google RNIB AdWords Sitelinks

Ad  Sitelinks give you more screen real estate in a prime location and early indications are that it results in more clicks. However to take advantage of it you need to have a good AdWords Account CTR. My experience is that you need a CTR of around 3% spread across all your ad Campaigns to be offered the Ad Sitelinks option. You can check if you qualify by logging onto your adwords account, go to Campaign > Settings > Networks, device and extensions. Here, if eligible, you can enter a brief description and the associated url for the appropriate pages on your site.

Location of Ad Sitelinks settings in AdWords

Google deals with the question `What ads qualify ? and they specifically say ” Ad Sitelinks are most likely to trigger on unique brand terms”. My experience has been that this is the case on all accounts that I have done this for.

Now on your main brand term you can occupy a large amount of google SERPS screen real estate – your AdSitelinks, regular site links and (in many cases) a site specific Search Box plus Local Listings. Anyone looking for you under your brand term should be able to find you.

Impression Share Report

The Impression Share Report can be created in the AdWords Report centre. The report shows the Impression Share(IS) for the Campaign and the percentage lost due to either the budget being too low, Lost IS (Budget) or lost due to poor ranking, Lost IS (Rank). For most Campaigns the largest loss has to do with Rank.  As Rank is CPC X Quality Score the most cost effective way to improve is to improve Quality Score.

Given that not all of the keywords in the Campaign will have a great Quality Score and your Maxm CPC will not always be high enough it is very unlikely that you will get 100% Impression Share (IS).  One reason for low IS could be that the keywords are not showing up on broad match. The Exact match (IS) figures helps here as they show how the Campaign would perform IF all keywords were Exact Match. Increasing your bid will also improve your Ranking too. However in chasing greater Impression Share remember that 30% or 40% Impression Share of a large `market` is better than a 100% IS of a small market. So do not be afraid to keep less than optimal keywords in the Campaign.

One drawback of this report is that it is only available at the Account and Campaign level where there is often too much data to make sense of it all. If this report was available at the ad group level I think it would be more widely used.

New Search Query Tool in AdWords

The new AdWords interface allows you to very easily access this information, by AdGroup or individual keyword, via the Search Query Performance Report.  Say you had an AdGroup relating to working part time and you had  included the keyphrase `part time`. After running the Campaign for 7/10 days you check the Search Query Report and see that for the keyphrase `part time` 25 clicks were registered. Of this 25 the report shows that 5 were as a result of Exact Match,  10 via Phrase Match and 10 via Broad Match. Review the keywords marked as Phrase or Broad Match and see if any of the search terms that triggered the ad were used 2 or more times. If so add these terms into the AdGroup as Broad Match. Doing this regularly will exand your keyword list with more high performing keywords. Note that if any of the Phrase or Broad match terms are not related to your ad eg `electrical timer`, `kitchen timer`you should put `electrical` and `kitchen` as negative keywords to prevent your ad from showing for these unrelated terms. Keywords that regularly achieve less than a 1% CTR should be looked at very closely with a view to either deleting them or moving them to a more appropriate AdGroup or Campaign.

Keyword Tool Local Global Search

A quick test indicates that the data in Local Search Volume is good but the lack of historic `Local` data is a pity eg a search term may be popular globally each month but here in the UK you will be making a decision based on just one months data. I suspect that for many the reverse would be better ie the current months data for Global with Local showing historic data. Google has not yet explained how this new data relates to the statement further up on the Keyword Tool page that ” Results are tailored to the languages and countries you choose below:” My vote would be for more local data and less world wide.

In the `Choose Columns to be displayed` field select `Show All`. To the left of this is the `Calculate estimates…` field. It is a good idea to leave this blank as you can then see the `Estimated Avg. CPC` for all the Keywords. The low cost ones with high search volume are what you are looking for – the hidden gems that can get you lots of visitors for little expense.

Note that the in the image above the columns have been sorted by`Approx Avg Search Volume`. This way you can quickly scan for high volume and low cost Keywords.