Quality Score Troubleshooting

In campaigns opted in for search network very often shows deterioration of Quality scores. Below 5 quality scores are a problem and must be addressed as quickly as possible. The steps you need to take are:

1. Check the CTR of the keyword, If it is Poor, start thinking of restricting the traffic by introducing more restrictive match type. If it is broad go for phrase or exact.
2. Check the magnifying glass next to the keyword in your account, it has three ingredients:1) relevancy, 2) landing page relevancy, 3) landing page load time. If first factor is poor, you just don't need to look into the landing page factor.
3. Check the Quality Scores of other keywords and try to identify the most common term causing this poorness of QS. It might be some single word or phrase. Like send, deliver etc. You should be able to identify the word/phrase which is behind the relevancy problem.
4. Write an ad text using the identified word/phrase, in the same ad group.
5. Try shifting these ad texts and keywords in a different ad group for better performance.
6. If Landing page relevancy is also a problem, you need to change the landing page either at keyword level or add an ad text with more relevant landing page.

To give a better idea of the steps involved in this process, I would use a real life example. Suppose I am running a flowers campaign and I find a keyword stats like:

Keyword:[send flowers delhi] CTR: 6%, Quality Score: 3, Match Type: Exact, Magnifying Glass says Keyword Relevancy is poor.

In this case CTR is high, match type is most restrictive and keyword is potentially most rewarding. I dig deeper and find out, most keywords with send initials are showing lower quality score. Now I have two apparent solutions to this problem, either I should create an ad with the phrase/word in the same ad group, or I should shift them to a different ad group entirely. Soon after creating a new ad with detected phrase, you see that QS shoots to 5, which is OK. If you further move it to a separate ad group, it might shoot up to 7 too.

similarly, if you get the problem is with the landing page, you should start experimenting with more relevant landing page which has the phrase written on it. In most cases, changing the destination URL at keyword level would be enough, however, if many keywords are affected it is better to shift them into another ad group with more focused creative.