How exactly does quality score work for each keyword? I have been doing some tests with about 5 major keywords for our site. I have managed to get 4 of them with a quality score of 7, yet the last one will not go above a 4. Here is an example of one that gets a quality score of 7, it's keyword is Service Award: Service Award 2 Day Rush Service. Free Engraving. Guaranteed Quality and Service. paradiseawards.com/Service-Award Yet with another keyword Crystal Awards it is: Crystal Awards 2 Day Rush Service. Free Engraving. Guaranteed Quality and Service. paradiseawards.com/Crystal-Award Yet the crystal awards keyword will not get above a 4 even if I keep boosting the max cost per click up. What am I missing? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
Your bid won't affect your QS*. The exact formula is Google's secret, but a big contributer is CTR. Does the Service Award keyword have a better CTR than the Crystal Awards keyword? If so, that's your culprit - to get your QS for the second up you'll need to work on refining your keyword list and your ad copy to boost CTR. *Well, it will, but only indirectly by improving your position.
These were all new keywords so they never had a previous CTR. In order to move up the CTR I would assume that I should pay enough to land in the top 3, thus helping my CTR for the keywords. Would it be a good idea to land in the top 3 on most of these keywords then? So assuming the CTR goes up, this then forces the quality score up as well and the bid price down? If that is correct shouldn't it then be advisable to work on a keyword by keyword basis moving their CTR up very high and then moving onto the next keyword? Rather then doing them all at once and paying high CPC to get quality up in all.
Quality Score is basically a standard deviation calculation. The average click rate of all advertisers using that keyword (past and present) is figured out. The SD is then figured out. Say the historical average is 3.5% and the SD is 0.4, if your CTR is 3.9%, you are one SD from the mean. If the mean QS is set at 5 (which is likely the case), your own QS will be 6. Note that position is taken into account. Higher positions get higher CTRs compared to lower positions. But Google figures that into the calculation. As mentioned, it has nothing to do with your bid. It is totally independent. Also nothing to do with your absolute CTR. A CTR of 2% can have a QS of 10 and a CTR of 5% a QS of 7. So don't compare CTRs. Look instead at the QS of individual keywords. Improve CTR by improving your ads.
quality score is based on the relevance between your keywords, ads, and landing page, as well as your ctr.