So you’re bidding on a keyword. You have the keyword in the title, description, display URL and destination URL. Your click through rate is over 5% and Google still says your quality score is poor? Your landing page has links to your privacy policy and your content is useful and relevant. So what’s the deal?
First of all it is important to understand that the Google AdWords quality score bot is not a person. It is a robot. It is unable to understand the context of text on a web page the way a human can.
The quality score bot does a reasonably good job most of the time, but sometimes we need to point them it in right direction. To do that, we need to structure our web pages semantically and structure our documents logically.
There are two very useful and free tools at our disposal when troubleshooting landing page quality scores. These are the W3 Semantic Extractor and the Google site related keyword tool. What better way to get information about what Google thinks your site is about then using a tool designed by Google to figure out exactly what your site is about?
What’s the problem?
Let me first start with an example of a landing page that does not correspond or relate to the keywords and ad text used.
The Keyword is: “Directory Submit”
Here is the ad:
Here is the Landing Page:
They appear to be a perfect match right? Wrong! After 1 day of running this particular keyword/ad with this particular landing page, our quality score went to “POOR”. The CTR was was 7%. The words “directory” and “submit” appear numerous times on the landing page too.
When we run the site through the semantic extractor, we can see that this page does not appear to outline anything to do with a “directory submit”.
When we run the site through the site related keyword tool, our keyword does not even show up in the list of terms Google thinks is related to the page!
So what can we do?
The above example may seem familiar to you. If you have been “Google slapped”, the first thing you might do is complain that your site is obviously relevant and that Google is just out to squeeze you for every drop of cash you are willing to part with. First of all lets look at an example of what a good site/ad/quality score is:
Keyword(s) targeted: “Search Engine Marketing”
Here is the ad:
Here is the landing page:
Here are the semantic extractor results for that page:
And here is the Google site keyword tool results:
This particular ad/keyword/landing page combination has our quality score at “GREAT” and our minimum bids at $0.01. See the difference?
We need make sure that we have our site marked up correctly. Use headings correctly , utilize at least the h1, h2 and h3 tags and make sure the content of each is related in the semantic extractor outline. So if your site sells shoes, your landing page heading tags would be made up something like:
h1 : buy red shoes
h2: best place to buy boots
h3: why red shoes are better than blue boots
This not only helps Google AdWords identify what your content is about for organic search rankings it also helps the quality score bot understand that your landing page is indeed related to the keywords you are bidding on.
While the above steps and tools are clearly not the only way to help Google understand the content of your site, they are free and a great place to start. The next time you get “Google slapped”, make sure you don’t deserve it.
Comments
44 responses so far ↓
Targ8.com on Aug 2, 2007 at 2:57 pm
What code do you need to use to mark up your pages using h1, h2 and h3 tags? Have you got an example?
Patrick Schaber on Aug 2, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Dave,
Great work on this! I have not had that problem, but I bookmarked this in case I do. I’d also be interested in the code tip as Targ8.com requested.
Thanks,
Pat
Kris from Florida on Aug 2, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Good tips, thanks for sharing . Stumbled this for future reference .
Gidseo on Aug 3, 2007 at 2:41 am
Thank you for a great post. I’m off to run a few tests…
Suki on Aug 3, 2007 at 2:55 am
Thats how a good Seo Consultant should work.. nothing new but itll help newbies stop bugging us “profesionals” with bad optimized websites.
Dave Davis on Aug 3, 2007 at 9:12 am
Thanks for the comments guys.
There is no sample code required, just standard:
Main Keyword
Main Keyword and something related to keyword
Get Main Keyword at rock bottom prices
And possibly
synonym of Main Keyword from the keyword tool
Hope this helps.
Arnold M. on Aug 3, 2007 at 10:59 am
Very good article! One thing about the heading tags: Use only one H1 tag per page, and do not break the hierarchy, H1 should be followed by H2, H2 can be followed by either H2 or H3, do not jump directly to H3 from H1.
Tomche on Aug 4, 2007 at 1:38 am
No wonder I was getting poor click rates. Got to start working!
Universos Virtuais on Aug 4, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Thank you for the nice tip. I am trying to learn about SEO, there isn´t much about SEO in portuguese, so, i am glad i find your article.
Have a great weekend!
Neu Kunden on Aug 5, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Sometimes it takes a differnt approach to discover the obvious. Thanks a lot!
Brian Turner on Aug 7, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Thanks for the heads up on the tools - will definitely be using the semantic extractor tool when I get into PPC over the coming months. :)
John S. Britsios on Aug 7, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Great article Dave, even if I follow all above already since years. But I sure will share this excellent article on my blogs and my forums. Keep up the excellent work!
Billy on Aug 8, 2007 at 9:58 pm
This is great. One of my clients had issues with quality score where Adwords were charging $10 per click, and they didn’t know what to do.
craig on Aug 13, 2007 at 5:42 am
Hi Dave,
Wonder if you may be able to point me on the right with this.
I’m new to this and trying to get some ppc up and running. I’m having problems getting a decent quality score.
I used the semantic extractor you mentioned in your post on two pages of my blog and it came back with the folllowing code related problems.
Do you think that these are litterally code errors preventing it from completing the scan of the pages?
If so that would I assume also prevent googles bot from ranking the page?
I haven’t written the blog in code form only used the visual writting tool of wordpress .
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
semantic results:
Using org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser
Exception net.sf.saxon.trans.DynamicError: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type “font” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “”.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type “font” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “”.
and on another page.
Using org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser
Exception net.sf.saxon.trans.DynamicError: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type “span” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “”.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type “span” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “”.
BrianE on Aug 18, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Thanks for the free semantic extractor tool. I’ve always used h1 /h2 tags but can see they need improvement. I have several main keywords , some are the plural version of the main ones. Should all keywords be included/distributed among the different h1/h2/h3 tags and/or should seperate landing pages be used?
Dave Davis on Aug 19, 2007 at 4:12 am
Craig,
The error that you are getting is simply that your page is not coded semantically . Of course this does not matter to Google, but in my opinion is essential when troubleshooting for yourself.
Brian, the tool is not ours. It was created by W3C. Keywords SHOULD be included in your HX tags but not spammy. As I noted, something related. Use the Google keyword tool to find related phrases and make sure Google thinks they are related to each other. That gives you the best chance.
If possible, use a separate landing page too for each ad group.
Wendy Piersall on Aug 20, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I’m not sure I buy it. I put up a landing page with some blogging products on it. I custom wrote a tutorial for the page about how to set up and install wordpress with your hosting company. I put “WordPress installation” not only in the title tags, but in my H2 tags.
I still got hit with $5 clicks for low quality scores on the term “WordPress installation”. It was relevant to both the products I was promoting as well as the content.
Now, if you can actually explain this one to me, I will PayPal you $20, just because it would be THAT worth it to me to know why the #$% Google seems to want to milk me dry! ;)
Allan Gardyne on Aug 31, 2007 at 3:53 am
Wendy, Here’s something which may help. Jeremy Palmer has just published a 10-page report (PDF file, free) on what you need to do to get a good Quality Score - http://www.quityourdayjob.com/qualityscore.pdf
He goes into a LOT of detail.
(I’m an affiliate but that’s not an affiliate link.)
SEO Ibiza on Feb 1, 2008 at 5:01 pm
excellent info thanks so much for this. dont kn ow how we havent seen your blog before now
SEO mkguyver on Apr 3, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Nice, but using superlatives is not a good thing. The best shoes for example. Also the keyword tool reference is out dated.
Seb on Apr 6, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Your findings is what I initially thought when I got slapped, so I used Google’s keyword tool to add keywords that Google recommend from the landing URL. After adding these to in to adwords, Google then gave these keywords stupid minimum bids like the rest of them.
Been using Google adwords for some years now, and it used be quite effective tool, but without harding changing anything over the years other than minor tweaks, I’m lucky to get 10 impressions.
I feel I’m going to be deleting the adword account very soon - its just not worth the effort.
iphone on May 13, 2008 at 12:57 pm
OK I’m a newbie and have a question on usage of the Semantic Data Extractor. I put in the URL I want to analyze and I got back this error:
Using org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser
Exception net.sf.saxon.trans.DynamicError: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Content is not allowed in prolog.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Content is not allowed in prolog.
Is there a format I need to use to use this tool?
Thanks,
toplist on Oct 28, 2008 at 11:48 am
An excellent overview with some sound advice. I wonder whether you consider the id and name attributes (where applicable) as another type of alternative text. I’m not sure whether screen readers or other Internet devices can actually extract this kind of text - the name or id of a form, for example - in a meaningful way, though. That said, however, it seems to me to make sense to name a search form “SearchForm” or a subscription form “SubscriptionForm”. Content management systems and authoring tools have a tendency, in my experience, to insert their own text like “f_box” or “f_r_t012″ which is hard enough for developers to follow, let alone a site visitor. I believe there are the beginnings of a trend, particularly when it comes to labelling div elements with meaningful id attributes. Certainly the magnificent Mr Z (www.zeldman.com) describes this in his book, Designing With Web Standards.
Sahaj on Nov 20, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Hi Dave
Nice Article. I have written an article about Google’s update on Quality Score http://www.pitstopmedia.com/sem/google-refines-quality-score. Check and let me know what you think.
Cheers
Sahaj
TraiaN on Dec 2, 2008 at 3:02 pm
It’s good Google provided a little more details on the Quality Score, but even thou QS will remain a big mistery for all of us. Some reverse engineering can be done anyway :). My conclusion is that a highly optimized page in terms of SEO, will have a great quality score. One of my colleagues wrote some articles about Google’s QS. You can find them at Google Adwords Quality Score - Part 1 and Part 2.
okey oyna on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:04 am
We are considering redoing our site in flash http://www.ibizavillas2000.com, it seems to make the experience much smoother and once it is loaded responds very quickly unlike so many other sites these days.
I would be interested to hear of any disadvantages? Surely if you code the application correctly navigation is obvious, no large time delays or impressive fireworks shows need to go on when the next click is an important one?
bedava okey oyna on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:05 am
I remember the days when those nasty poeple were making fun of the young Flash 5, mocking him, saying that it was 99 % bad, poeple are so cruel.
But they were not so self assured when Flash grew up, became stronger, more capable, and more clever !
Yes, by those days, I was telling them how nice it was to have a friend like Flash, how nice it was to travel the world with him and meet all those beautifull women ! I would have never done that with css, html …
Yes, those years of fight and hopes were wonderfull…now is time a maturity and responsabilities…
okey on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:06 am
mersi
okey oynama on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:07 am
all good advice. saw that dotcom boom and bust the first time round from another angle (IT Recruitment) still just as messy. we had web developers previously earning £75 per hour, a year later scratching around with many months between contracts and lucky to scrape £25 per hour if they did find one.
online okey on Dec 31, 2008 at 11:08 am
I remember the days when those nasty poeple were making fun of the young Flash 5, mocking him, saying that it was 99 % bad, poeple are so cruel.
But they were not so self assured when Flash grew up, became stronger, more capable, and more clever !
Yes, by those days, I was telling them how nice it was to have a friend like Flash, how nice it was to travel the world with him and meet all those beautifull women ! I would have never done that with css, html …
Yes, those years of fight and hopes were wonderfull…now is time a maturity and responsabilities…
safe diets on Jan 21, 2009 at 2:48 am
I think just like what Dave says about matching your Adwords ad to the user experience and expectations, our website description tag should do exactly the same thing. Great post Dave.
sohbet siteleri on Jan 31, 2009 at 5:21 pm
thanks
Brian on Feb 10, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Excellent information. I’m gonna add this link to my site for my clients to review.
okey oyna on Feb 19, 2009 at 6:10 am
thanks
okey on Feb 23, 2009 at 6:26 pm
danke admin
An excellent overview with some sound advice. I wonder whether you consider the id and name attributes (where applicable) as another type of alternative text. I’m not sure whether screen readers or other Internet devices can actually extract this kind of text - the name or id of a form, for example - in a meaningful way, though. That said, however, it seems to me to make sense to name a search form “SearchForm” or a subscription form “SubscriptionForm”. Content management systems and authoring tools have a tendency, in my experience, to insert their own text like “f_box” or “f_r_t012″ which is hard enough for developers to follow, let alone a site visitor. I believe there are the beginnings of a trend, particularly when it comes to labelling div elements with meaningful id attributes. Certainly the magnificent Mr Z (www.zeldman.com) describes this in his book, Designing With Web Standards.
okey oyunu on Feb 23, 2009 at 6:32 pm
It’s good Google provided a little more details on the Quality Score, but even thou QS will remain a big mistery for all of us. Some reverse engineering can be done anyway :). My conclusion is that a highly optimized page in terms of SEO, will have a great quality score. One of my colleagues wrote some articles about Google’s QS. You can find them at Google Adwords Quality Score - Part 1 and Part 2.
logo tasarım on Mar 2, 2009 at 4:14 am
I hope the petty little group that tried to stifle free speech with said spurious DMCAs gets their ass handed to them. I would say this even if it was the creationists who were being picked on through illegal means, really - free speech is free speech!
Ironically, I’ve never heard of that anti-creationism group before, and what’ll probably happen here is it’ll backfire on the creationist group, creating more publicity for people they perceive to be a threat - thus ensuring that more people will check the other group out, and MAKING them more of a threat. Not to mention the legal trouble the creationist group is liable to get into over this.
Isn’t justice beatiful when it’s poetic?
okey oyna on Mar 4, 2009 at 4:39 am
thanks you
Dr. Altaf on Mar 13, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Hi Dave,
Appreciate for the tips. But irony is that I read millions of pages of such tips, no way to get the actual tricks as no one will just tell that secrets.Why they?
So it is always interesting to read & get interests in it is the benefit,but all gurus who already know the tips never tell that so…
If you have an answer to my question please ..
provide.. Thanks!
John Hoff - WpBlogHost on Mar 17, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Hi Dave. Nice article. I love the point you make about why not use Google’s own tool to discover what it thinks your page is relevant to.
mobilya on May 4, 2009 at 6:07 pm
It’s good Google provided a little more details on the Quality Score, but even thou QS will remain a big mistery for all of us. Some reverse engineering can be done anyway :). My conclusion is that a mobilya http://dekorasyon.dantelix.com highly optimized page in terms of SEO, will have a great quality score. One of my colleagues wrote some articles about Google’s QS.
mobilya on May 4, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Hi Dave. Nice article. I love the point you make about why not use örgü dantel dekorasyon mobilya http://dantelix.net Google’s own tool to discover what it thinks your page is relevant to.
mario oyunları on May 22, 2009 at 6:23 am
It’s good Google provided a little more details on the Quality Score, but even thou QS will remain a big mistery for all of us.
Scott Brooks - How to Write Ebooks on Jun 25, 2009 at 6:34 am
Thanks for this great info Dave. This explains a lot to me. I have my main keyword in H1 tags, but there must be other factors affecting my quality score because my rank should be higher and CPCs lower. I’ll use Google’s tool to see if I can improve it.
Scott
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