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In a previous post, we shared some of the details pertaining to adCenter’s soon to be released Quality Score (QS). This post will explain how advertisers can use QS to determine what optimizations will increase their competitiveness and success in the Bing+Yahoo search marketplace.
How to use the Overall Score (1-10) – Use these values to get a rough idea of how much attention an individual keyword may require.
How to use the Sub-Scores – Treat this as the ‘what/why’ behind the overall score. The overall score will tell you which KWs need the most and least help, whereas the sub-scores will indicate just what kind of optimization help is required.
Advertisers should zero-in on keywords with an overall score less than or equal to 5, and then leverage the sub-scores in determining what types of actions or optimization tactics are most appropriate for driving improvement. With that in mind, let’s look at the top actions within the optimization tactics recommended in the tables above.
Top CTR Optimizations
Negative Keywords: Apply negative keywords to limit how frequently your ads are matched to irrelevant queries; The adCenter search query report is a great place to find new negatives. Ad Copy: Consider whether your ads are as relevant as they can be to the keywords in your ad group and make adjustment as appropriate. Implementing dynamic keyword or parameter insertion can create ads which are more relevant to searchers which should increase CTR. If you have a number of different ads, pausing those with the lowest CTR will ensure the better performing ads are triggered more often for your keywords. Re-Organize: If your ad group contains many dis-similar keywords such that it’s hard to write an appropriate ad that applies to all, you may want to consider grouping your keyword set into more narrowly focused ad groups. NOTE: Keyword CTR used in calculation of the keyword relevance score is normalized for position, meaning that bidding up to achieve higher ad positions (which typically see higher CTRs) will not increase your score.
Negative Keywords: Apply negative keywords to limit how frequently your ads are matched to irrelevant queries; The adCenter search query report is a great place to find new negatives.
Ad Copy: Consider whether your ads are as relevant as they can be to the keywords in your ad group and make adjustment as appropriate. Implementing dynamic keyword or parameter insertion can create ads which are more relevant to searchers which should increase CTR. If you have a number of different ads, pausing those with the lowest CTR will ensure the better performing ads are triggered more often for your keywords.
Re-Organize: If your ad group contains many dis-similar keywords such that it’s hard to write an appropriate ad that applies to all, you may want to consider grouping your keyword set into more narrowly focused ad groups.
NOTE: Keyword CTR used in calculation of the keyword relevance score is normalized for position, meaning that bidding up to achieve higher ad positions (which typically see higher CTRs) will not increase your score.
Top Landing Page Strategies
Keywords on Landing Page: Ensure that the keywords you’re buying appear on your landing page and in the various site tags including – description meta, keywords meta, paragraph, image (alt), title, list item, and heading; More Specific Landing Page: Consider whether a more keyword specific landing page is available for your keyword, and adjust your destination URLs accordingly. If you’re landing all of your keywords on our homepage, you may look for site pages which correspond to your ad group categories. Link to more details on Landing Page Content
Keywords on Landing Page: Ensure that the keywords you’re buying appear on your landing page and in the various site tags including – description meta, keywords meta, paragraph, image (alt), title, list item, and heading;
More Specific Landing Page: Consider whether a more keyword specific landing page is available for your keyword, and adjust your destination URLs accordingly. If you’re landing all of your keywords on our homepage, you may look for site pages which correspond to your ad group categories.
Link to more details on Landing Page Content
User Experience Strategies
Evaluate your site to ensure that the content provided is original and unique and create more original content as appropriate Reduce the number of ‘interstitial’ (re-directs) being used Avoid/Reduce the presence of advertising in your landing experience Evaluate your site against the site types define by Microsoft as low quality; if you fit one of these categories, you may need to bid in considerable excess of the market norm to achieve consistent eligibility Link to more details on Landing Page User Experience
Evaluate your site to ensure that the content provided is original and unique and create more original content as appropriate
Reduce the number of ‘interstitial’ (re-directs) being used
Avoid/Reduce the presence of advertising in your landing experience
Evaluate your site against the site types define by Microsoft as low quality; if you fit one of these categories, you may need to bid in considerable excess of the market norm to achieve consistent eligibility
Link to more details on Landing Page User Experience
Track changes in your Quality Score as you apply optimizations
Because all elements of quality score will be made available in adCenter’s keyword performance report, advertisers will not only be able to view, filter, and sort scores across their accounts, but view changes in their scores over-time.
To ensure you’re able to leverage quality score for adCenter optimization, please add your questions to the comments section of this post so that we can provide all the necessary details you require on or before feature launch.
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Thanks, Paul. This will be very useful information.
When will you be releasing the feature?
Thanks for the info
Hi Paul, why most of the quality score is "n/a" in keyword performance report now? what might be the reason for this "n/a" quality?
Very handy, thanks for releasing this info now and not later..
This is a really horrible idea and a slap in the face to advertisers like myself.
Quality score is a function of organic search and should remain that way.
If we ranked high enough to end up on the top of page one for a given keyword, we wouldn't need to pay for keywords.
We pay for keywords to accomplish a page placement that we cannot reach organically.
Don't you understand this business at all!!
Oh, they understand the business pretty well. They are having to learn from Google, but they learn quick. :-)
This quality score is a bother to be sure, but I thinkyour explanation is more clear than what Google offers. I don't feel confused as I do when I try to understand what Google wants. Thank you for that...!
@Margaret - You're welcome. You should be able to see your scores in your adCenter KW performance reports now. Simply select "Change Columns & Layout", and "Add Remove Columns" to include Quality Score, Keyword Relevance, Landing Page Relevance, and Landing Page User Experience along w/ your normal performance metrics
@Brian - We've completed the first phase of our release which has made quality score available in your KW performance report. Use the instructions above in my response to Margaret to pull your scores. You'll see QS added to your campaign management screens in the coming days as we scale the feature.
@Shirley - It sounds like you may have pulled a report from a time period during which Quality Score was still being deployed to our servers. Give it another try using a more recent time period (like this week) to see more scores.
@Robert - No problem! We wanted to make sure that you had all the information you needed to start optimizing day-1. More details are available in our help here - http://adcenterhelp.microsoft.com/help.aspx?project=adcenter_live_prem&mkt=en-us&querytype=keyword&query=yekdi91"
@Howard - Thank you for the perspective. If you're interested in understanding how keyword based marketing works and how it might compliment the SEO strategy you made reference to, you might enjoy some of the content in our adExcellence training program here - http://advertising.microsoft.com/support-center/training-accreditation
@Chris - Thank you for the feedback. We received extensive feedback from customers asking for quality score as a way of understanding how adCenter was evaluating their relevance to point them in the right direction for optimizing. In addition to the blog post, we’ve provided an extensive documentation to explain not just how QS is calculated, but the specific steps you can take to improve it and track that improvement over time - http://adcenterhelp.microsoft.com/help.aspx?project=adcenter_live_prem&mkt=en-us&querytype=keyword&query=yekdi91"