First, some facts:
The advertising industry saw outrageous gains in online advertising spending for 2006, $16.8 billion in revenues, a record high. 2007 looks even better, and forecasts looking 5 years out estimate over $42 billion! Google AdWords. This advertising platform has become the dominant player in this new media, Google being by far the most used search engine, and by far the best medium to target and effectively convert eyeballs into leads. Google AdWords has revolutionized and also democratized the ad world, allowing anyone and everyone a chance at talking to the public at large. Setting up a Google AdWords campaign is one thing, but effectively managing it is another. If you are blindly overpaying for clicks, well that might be putting money in Google’s pocket, but it certainly isn’t helping you. One key component influencing click costs and placement is the Quality Score. It’s important to understand this dynamic variable, it measures keyword relevancy to ad text and user’s search, in doing so it influences your ads’ position and also partly determines minimum bids. Basically: the higher the scores, the better the ad positions and lower campaign costs. The main factors quality scores consider: – CTR, or keyword clickthrough rate – Relevancy of the keyword to the ad – Landing page quality – Historic performance Where can I find this Quality Score? – Select the campaign, then ad group – Click Customize columns – Select Show Quality Score Keywords can ultimately have one of three states, Great, OK, or Poor. Obviously you want to at least be OK, if not Great! There is also a Keyword Analysis page, Google has created a get tool to explain performance and also give recommendations to improve performance. Keeping track of this key component, and figuring out how to be “Great” will help insure your advertising campaign is cost effective, and also insure you are really serving the best campaign to the public. Future posts will look further into Quality Score and how to maximize this aspect of paid search. In the meantime, your feedback is appreciated. Please post a comment with any thoughts or questions, and we will address those in future posts!