I have been running a campaign for about 5 days now all inside 1 campaign and testing different ad groups. I have gotten to an ad group that gets about 20% CTR but my QS went from great to OK within 1 day from the creation of this ad group. What can I do to improve my QS? The title and the description of my ad text is present in both my domain url, landing page, and keywords. It is not a single landing page but an actual site as well. I'm pretty stumped and don't know what more to do. Any help is appreciated. Some more information... Keywords are set with quotes "KEYWORD" so it gets the exact phrase. The site has no PR. The site ranked very well in search engines but dropped last week for some reason (probably sandboxed) No privacy statment link No Contact us link
keep writing more text ads... Lots of them and just because the keyword in the in title and landing page does not mean its a good text add or guaranteed good QS. Write more text ads, try different messages. It will eventually go back to great
But the text ad is already getting 20% CTR, am I just testing different words in the text to compare with QS?
Depending on previous account history, AdWords will often start a campaign higher up to test it. The truer indication of QS is when it settles down after this initial trialling. You could try getting your CTR rate up by bidding on broad phrase terms as well, and expanding your search term base by building on the keywords that are doing OK. If you're able to, then a Privacy Policy and Contact Us page would definitely help. Review your process starting from the keywords you've researched, then make sure your ad text and landing page are all targeted to a particular search term. While you're at it, just make sure your landing page/s loads quickly too.
loads quickly for sure, I actually just started ranking very well for the term I am bidding on. Should I stop that campaign on work on new keyword / bidding combo? Or will stop bidding have an effect on that?
As speedpppc said, a keyword usually starts out with an OK or great QS. If you see it dropping then this means your CTR is not very good and even though you have a 20% CTR you have to remember that CTR is not an indicator of success since google normalizes keyword history performance per keyword, per position and averages those numbers out based on all advertisers history. So if your 20% CTR in position 2 history is not as good as googles average history of 25% CTR for position 2 then your QS is going to start dropping.
bid on exact matches to improve ctr not broad terms, long tail keywords can in fact have lower ctr rarther than higher. Your page may be loading slowly which reduces quality score somewhat. creating new ads isnt definately going to help.
I think Robert was saying that Google compare your CTR to the historical performance of other advertisers that occupied your SERP position for the keyword. So if the average CTR for your position and your keyword was 25% CTR a 20% CTR would be considered OK and not Great.
Whatever keyword you're bidding on, there was someone already in the number 2 position before you. Everyone before you in number 2 position for keyword "butt plugs" (because "widgets" is out of your price range) were averaging a 25% CTR. You outbid and move into number 2 position but only get 20% CTR. Your clickthrough rate is underperforming for that position compared to previous ads.
This thread is very informative. I do have a question...since QS directly relates to CTR is it more wise to focus on improving CTR? Which would in turn improve QS? Or does other factors directly effect QS as stongly?
yes you just need to improve CTR at this point. Once you have no landing page problems, its all CTR from there...
its mostly dependent upon your CTR other than that tweak your landing page and optimize it for your keywords. Break things down.
It is not an easy game. I found in fact the key is your landing page. It is more important than your ads. Sometimes a bad ads group can affect the performance of your account, so make sure refine your ads frequently.
I think the best way to answer this question is: what was the change you made to your campaign that affected your quality score (consequently the CPC) the most?