Good keyword research forms only part of the most effective AdWords strategies. The other part is good content. You may think this is a given, that you’d only be advertising via AdWords if you already had good quality content in place but you’d be amazed at how many associates I’ve worked with and helped that simply did not use effective landing page copy. I’ve written a few tips in here about how to increase your quality score through better quality content.
Quality scores and quality content go hand in hand. To give you an example, here’s the ins and outs of one of my own AdWords campaigns and landing page combinations which went from an OK quality score of 7/10 to a great quality score of 10/10 simply by writing better, well researched content specifically related to the keyword, ad group and ad text I was using.
I have two pages targeting the keywords xbox red ring of death [one] and [two]. Now I have used my ‘about page’ in this particular case as an excuse to write good, related content. The target keyword in both of these cases is ‘how to fix the red ring of death’ using exact matching keywords.
Now on page one, I have really written the content around this phrase whilst in page two, I have divested slightly. The difference is that page one receives a quality score of 10/10 whilst page 2 only scores 8/10.
Project: Fixing the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death
So, how did I do it and what is actually different about the content?
Well, first of all I have to be honest and say I didn’t write the content myself but took advice from a great professional content writer whose quality of work constantly excels all expectations and who charges a more than fair price for the priviledge. Actually, at the moment, he’s running a limited time special offer deal so if you want to increase your landing page quality but just don’t have the time (like me!), then make sure you give this a look ASAP.
Ok, so back to the point at hand, how exactly did we do it? Well, as with any content you should be writing it for the end user, not the search engine spiders or PPC bots etc. This means you need to create a structurally and intellectually sound piece of writing using the core target keywords (‘how to fix the red ring of death’) and base the article around it. This doesn’t mean spam the heck out of the article by frequently referring to the keyword, but by perhaps including the keyword and variations of it in every other paragraph.
It’s also important to create section titles using html header tags with the target phrase (or a slight variation of it) in the article too. This adds structure. For example, in our case you’ll see that the main page title on the how to fix an xbox red ring of death page has variations of the target keyword in it.
To tie that into AdWords and PPC, I am running one Text Ad in an AdCampaign titled ‘Xbox Red Ring of Death Fix’ and in an AdGroup with only one keyword in it ‘how to fix red ring of death’:
100% Proven Xbox 360 Fix
Finally! Red Ring Fix That Takes
Just 30 Mins And Works Every Time
www.affiliatemusketeer.com/xbox360
My landing page title on the 10/10 quality score page is “How To Fix The Red Ring of Death on the XBOX 360″ whilst on the 8/10 score page it is “Why Am I Helping You Fix The Red Ring of Death on the XBOX 360?”.
You see how one is more targeted and specific? This is also a major contributing factor as to why one page outperforms another (at least in terms of AdWords Quality Score).
Summarise How To Increase Quality Score via Well Written Landing Pages:
- Write well targeted content (or get someone like Rob to do it for you!)
- Make sure you create very tightly targeted AdWords Campaigns, AdGroups and Ads with as tightly groups target keywords as possible
- Make sure you make use of the landing page title tag and keep it very closely linked to your target kewywords and AdWords factors (Campaign/AdGroup/TextAd)
- Structure your content well by using header tags (h1, h2, h3 etc) to groups paragraphs into ‘mini chapters’. You should use h1 only once on your page – at the very top is best, and then h2, h3, h4 etc for decreasingly important headers – but still a variant of the main page theme.
If you’d like more examples of some of my high quality score adwords landing pages then please feel free to drop me an email or post a comment on the blog.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Hi,
Thank you for the useful tips…. really eye opener.
Just wondering, have you promoted CPA offer like email/zip submit before?
Do you have any advice on good landing page for email/zip submit?
Thanks,
Anto
July 20th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Hi,
I would like to increase my keywords quality score to 10/10. Kindly let me know some examples how to increase my keywords quality score.
Regards,
Sridhar. K
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:28 am
Sridhar, I’ve written a full post about increasing quality score to 10/10, have a look at that and hopefully it will help.
April 26th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
I am only able to get my ads to a quality score of 7 no matter what I do.
For example, if I have a campaign ad called “Meditation Music”, I also put the title of the ad as meditation music, and also include the phrase meditation music in the description and also in the url etc. And meditation music is the keyword phrase I use. Then, the landing page has the keyword “mediation music on it in various places, and the landing page is all about meditation music. After the ad is approved it is 7 out of 10, never more then 7.
So I have come to conclusion that to get a 8, 9, or 10 Quality score there has to be at least some CTR (Click Through Rate) history.
If you eventually get 5000 impressions, and only 1 click, your quality score may even drop drop from a 7 to a 5 even if your ad and landing page are perfect as far as the keyword you are using.
But if you have a attractive ad that attracts a lot of clicks, initially you will have to pay a lot (I think) to get your beginning clicks, but as you get more clicks (and if your CTR is very good and has high percentage), not only will your cost per click decrease, but your ad quality score will finally rise above the 7 and may eventually reach 10.
At least this is how I think it works. I rarely ever get clicks, so as i said I usually stay at a quality scroe of 7, which then drops to 6 and sometimes 5, after the ad has had time to gain some poor CTR history.
So in conclusion I am thinking that if you have a 10/10 you must have had the budget to at first pay a lot for clicks, and a ad that gained a good CTR history. But I don’t think it is possible to get a 8, 9, or 10 quality score even if your ad and landing page are perfect, if you only have a fresh ad that has no CTR history. At least as of April 2010 this is the way it is (as you know Google is always chaning their Adwords system), but maybe that is not the way it was when you wrote the above. Correct me if I am wrong.
April 27th, 2010 at 1:55 am
Hi Ed, you are correct. I have done some further setting up of accounts since I wrote this article and if you have a fresh AdWords account with no account history (which would act the same as your no CTR history theory), it is very difficult to get 10/10 quality scores from the off – in fact it is near impossible.
The only way to improve this is by building some account history into your AdWords account by perhaps targeting some less competitive (less expensive) phrase match or exact match terms and focus on raising the CTR in the early days.
Once you have 4 or 5 adgroups with a CTR of 5% + and a decent amount of account history (say 30 days), it seems to be easier to improve quality score for other adgroups too.
July 19th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Hi Ed, thanks for a brilliant and informative article. I have always been a believer in creating high quality content which are backed up with a PPC campaign. Having said that, I was never quite sure exactly how to achieve this.
Thanks for pointing out what works, I will definitely be using these tips in the future.