Pages

Monday, September 9, 2013

Hacking Quality Score: How One Advertiser Got A Quality Score Of 8.8/10

I believe that Quality Score is so critical to PPC success. To illustrate the point in a more concrete way, I want to present a detailed case study of a WordStream client that is absolutely crushing its AdWords Quality Score. In this case study, I’ll reveal exactly how they did it, and how much they’ve gained from their efforts.

Average Quality Score Of 8.8/10? What? How!

The advertiser in this case study is a small business operating in the insurance industry (I’ve anonymized the data to protect client identity), which happens to be one of the most competitive verticals in PPC. A skeptic might suggest that the situation is pretty hopeless, without chance of success.
But the truth is far from it! In fact, this AdWords advertiser is thriving! Take a look here:
Figure A: The Reason for Such High Quality Scores is (Surprise!) The Advertiser’s Amazing CTR’s
Figure A: This advertiser’s Quality Score rocks!
Figure A shows a graph of the advertiser’s Quality Score distribution. The green bars on the graph show that all of the  keyword impressions in the advertiser’s account are being accrued to keywords with perfect Quality Scores of 10/10 or 7/10, for an impression-weighted average Quality Score of 8.8/10!
To give you a better sense of just how great this is, the yellow curve on the figure shows the typical Quality Score distribution based on some internal WordStream best practices that we’ve developed. From that, you can see that it’s quite rare to have such high percentages of perfect 10 Quality Score keywords and no low Quality Score keywords in an account.
So how the heck did they do it?

Quality Score Is Just Normalized Click-Through Rate

In a previous article, I showed how having a high click-through rate (CTR) relative to Google’s expected CTR for your ad position is the key for having high Quality Scores. Thus, you’d expect an advertiser with super-high Quality Scores to have decent click-through rates. This is indeed the case, as you can see in Figure B.
High CTR  = High Quality Scores
Figure B: High CTR = High Quality Scores
Above, I’ve graphed the CTR versus the average ad position for the advertiser’s top 200 keywords (those with the most impressions). Notice how this advertiser’s click-through rates are off the charts!
To give you a sense of how amazing these click-through rates are, the tiny little yellow curve on the bottom of the chart shows you what a typical CTR would be for a given ad position — again, based on internal best practices developed at WordStream. Also note that the advertiser’s overall average CTR from search is a whopping 14.06%, despite being in a relatively low average position of 2.88.
The reason for the high Quality Scores is straightforward: the advertiser has very high average click-through rates vs. what Google expects to see.
The real question here is: How do you get a 14.06% CTR in an average position of 2.88?
Most of the outlier keywords with CTRs of 30%, 40%, 50% and even 70% are branded keywords, which generally have very high CTRs — but the rest of the keywords aren’t. It’s interesting to note that there are even keywords with 0% CTR which have perfect Quality Scores of 10/10. It’s almost like the high account average CTR is pulling up the Quality Scores for all keywords in the account. I see this in a lot of accounts, and it’s one reason why I always advocate budgeting at least 15% of your PPC budget toward branded keywords.
But, what about all the other keywords with high CTRs? How the heck do they do that? Is there a secret computer glitch in the AdWords system that can be exploited?

This Advertiser Earned His High Quality Scores!

The first thing I notice when looking over this account is that this advertiser is no lazy bum! His amazing Quality Scores weren’t the result of some computer glitch, but rather of diligent, smart PPC optimization work. He’s in his account at least once a week for half an hour or so actually optimizing stuff. Take a look here:
Slow and steady wins the race – Ongoing PPC optimization is Key to Success
Figure C: Slow and steady wins the race – ongoing PPC optimization is key to success
The figure above was created by looking at the change history logs in AdWords, from which I can ascertain what (if anything) is actually happening in the account. Notice how, in the last month, this small business advertiser has diligently created 10 new ads, tried out 164 new keywords, and added 4 new ad groups. Furthermore, by looking at the 90-day change history numbers, you can see that the advertiser’s optimization activities are consistent over time — definitely a key habit for solving the Quality Score mystery.
It’s also worth noting that even with his amazing Quality Scores of 8.8, he’s not resting on his laurels — he’s still in his account every week, optimizing stuff! This is an attitude that I’ve found to be common among PPC marketers with high Quality Scores.
Okay, so now we know that to get good Quality Scores, you have to do some optimization work. But you’re probably still wondering what exactly the advertiser is optimizing! Let’s first take a look at his keywords.

Focus On Long Tail Keywords

In order to get double digit CTRs, you’ll need to be a little picky in choosing your keywords, especially in a super competitive vertical like insurance. How picky? Take a look here.
To get duble digit CTRs, you’ll need to be a little picky in choosing your keywords
Figure D: To get double digit CTRs, you’ll need to be a little picky in choosing your keywords
In the preceding chart, I analyzed the account’s keywords to see what percentage of impressions are being attributed to keywords with one word (e.g., “insurance,” which is hopelessly broad and unspecific) versus long tail keywords with 3 or more words (e.g., “boston motorcycle insurance,” which is far more relevant and specific). Notice how a whopping 82% of this advertiser’s keyword impressions are being attributed to long tail keywords? This is a key to achieving double digit CTRs.
Being picky is more than just picking specific keywords; you also need to eliminate junk search queries using negative keywords. But, do negative keywords impact Quality Score?

According To Google, Negative Keywords Do Not Impact Quality Score

The official word from Google is that using negative keywords do not impact Quality Score; however, I’m not so sure about that. I can assure you that smart usage of negative keywords will most certainly raise your CTR — and higher CTR almost always leads to higher Quality Score. (It will also improve your ROI!) Let’s take a look at this advertiser’s use of negative keywords:
Figure D: Do Negative Keywords Raise Quality Score? It's unclear - but it certainly raises CTR and ROI.
Figure E: Do negative keywords raise Quality Score? The Goog says no, but this advertiser swears by it.
Regardless, it certainly raises CTR and improves ROI.
You can see that negative keyword optimization is probably the advertiser’s most favored PPC optimization method, having added around 100 negative keywords in the last month and around 200 in the last quarter. Like weeding a garden, negative keyword optimization is an important ongoing task!
The combination of targeted keywords and specific negative keywords is a very powerful combination. Notice how, in the following figure, you can see that the advertiser’s average impression share across the entire account (on a budget weighted basis) is 89%!
Figure E: Being Picky with Keywords Means capturing a high impression share of a more narrow portfolio of keywords
Figure F: Being picky with keywords means capturing a high impression share of a more narrow portfolio of keywords.
This is pretty much as high an impression share as you’ll ever get, since Google never monetizes 100% of any keyword search. Since there are billions of insurance searches every month, and it would cost too much to buy them all, your keyword targeting strategy should involve being picky and capturing a high impression share of a narrow portfolio of keywords, as opposed to targeting broader keywords and capturing a lower impression share.

Ad Text Optimization

The next step to getting high CTRs is matching those “golden” keywords with killer ads — and to do ad text optimization, as this advertiser has clearly done:
Figure F: This Small Business Advertiser has 100 ads!
Figure G: This small business advertiser has 100 ads!
Above, you can see that even this small business advertiser has over 100 active ads in his account, which is relatively high for a small account.

Leveraging PPC Best Practices

Finally, a quick scan of the account shows that the advertiser is leveraging all the various AdWords best practices like ad extensions, advanced match types, etc. While this may seem obvious to advanced PPC marketers, adoption of many of these features is quite low — for example, only about half of small businesses have conversion tracking turned on!
Figure H: A quick check of PPC best practices!

The Benefits Of Quality Score

I’ve previously discussed the benefits of having a high Quality Score, but how does the theory align with the reality of this case study?
This particular advertiser was previously spending around $1,000/month on PPC and is now spending about half that much. His CPC is roughly half the industry average. His average CPA is approximately $12. What’s not to love here?

This Could Be Your Quality Score, Too

Hopefully in this article today, I’ve convinced you that “hacking” AdWords Quality Score amounts to doing some smart PPC optimization work, with the proper expectation that it’s going to take some time to figure it out. So, what the heck are you waiting for?

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Measure & Optimize for Offline Sales with AdWords Conversion Import

Potential buyers have increasingly turned to the web as the first step in their purchase decisions.  So for years, digital marketers in insurance, auto sales, and other high consideration industries have been using AdWords to build awareness and generate leads. These leads have been handed to sales reps, who then help customers complete the purchase process.

In AdWords, you’ve been able to see which keywords lead to higher or lower lead volumes, and to optimize for a cost per lead goal. But there's been no easy way to measure and optimize in AdWords for events that happen beyond the website, like a customer order taken over the phone by your sales team.

New Conversion Import Feature

The new AdWords conversion import feature can help you measure and optimize for the complete end-to-end purchase process. Now you can upload your offline conversion events into AdWords and see how clicks on your ads led to sales made in the offline world such as over the phone or via a sales rep.


Click image to enlarge

And since your offline conversion events will be incorporated into your existing AdWords conversion data, tools such as Search Funnels, Automated rules and Flexible bid strategies can leverage that data.

How you might use the conversion import feature

Let’s see how importing conversions can help a small business measure and optimize for the entire customer journey, from online leads to offline sales.

Isabelle designs, builds and sells high-end custom furniture. She uses AdWords to drive prospective customers to her website, where they can submit their contact information and request a sales call. AdWords Conversion Tracking can measure these raw lead submissions, but since most of them won’t result in a sale, she optimizes her campaigns on raw submitted leads; not actual sales.

Now that she’s able to import her offline conversion data (including sale value), Isabelle can better understand which keywords drive the most profitable sales. With a more accurate ROI picture, Isabelle can better manage her bids and budget.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Easily compare your ad performance over time

Which campaigns are down this week? How is my performance this month compared to last month? If you’re like most advertisers, you ask yourself these questions on a regular basis. Over the next few days, we’re rolling out a feature that makes it much easier compare metrics across different time periods by putting the data right in your AdWords tables.

Once “compare dates” is enabled in your date selector, you’ll see a new + button at the top of many columns. Click the + above Clicks, for example, and the Clicks column expands to show you this week’s Clicks, last week’s Clicks, the absolute change and the percent change.



This new functionality has been added to many reports across AdWords, on most metrics. All of the additional columns are also sortable and filterable, which makes it easy to answer questions like:

Which campaigns saw the largest increase in clicks?
Which ad groups saw conversions drop by more than 20%
Which keywords saw an increase of at least 100 clicks?

You can also use filters on these columns. This makes it easy, for example, to create a saved filter which finds all campaigns that saw a decrease in clicks of 20% or more:


Like Us on Facebook