Here’s to the backbone behind a strong ad campaign, the key to a satisfying search consumer experience, and the gateway to conversion opportunities for advertisers.

Here’s to relevance. It’s a crucial component in obtaining the most return on investment (ROI) from your advertising efforts. But how do we define relevance from an editorial guidelines perspective? What gauges do we use when deeming keywords, ads, and landing pages compliant with Microsoft adCenter’s Quality and Relevance Guidelines?

Relevance components are evaluated individually at the keyword, ad, and landing page level. The relationship between these three components is then reviewed to gauge the strength of the overall user experience – for example, is the ad in context with the keyword, and does the landing page have a logical connection to the ad content? If so, then they are considered relevant.

Keywords

User engagement and ROI is driven by choosing keywords that are directly -- not peripherally -- related to the products, services, or content being offered. For example:


To minimize editorial disapprovals, follow these tips:

Avoid the “Hail Mary” approach: Avoid bidding on long lists of peripherally related or entirely irrelevant keywords, for example: rote dictionary terms or celebrity names. This will most likely result in editorial disapprovals across the campaign.

Deliver on your landing page: Ensure that keywords you are using are in some way represented on the landing page. If a keyword does not relate in some way to content on the landing page, it will be subject for editorial action. For example, if you are advertising camping equipment and bid on the keyword “blue waterproof tent,” you should ensure that the user is taken directly to a page that offers this product. If the user is brought to a page within a site that promotes only red flannel sleeping bags, then the keyword in question would be deemed irrelevant in this case.

Ad Title, Text, and Display URL

Build ads that are accurate, clear, concise, and promote exactly what the user can expect to find on the landing page, including the keywords being used, if possible.

Follow these best practices when creating ad content:

Get smart with dynamic insertion: Utilizing the dynamic text feature is an efficient and impactful way to customize an ad to make it more appealing and relevant to a customer’s search. When creating your base ad and choosing which keywords to work with, be sure to plan ahead and use the preview feature in adCenter to ensure your ad is grammatically correct and pertinent across all combinations. Here are a couple of dynamically-inserted ad examples that could have used a double check.

Follow through on sales and promotions: Buy one, get one free? 15% off all designer items? It’s an easy, but important practice to ensure that these deals are delivered prominently on the landing page as they are described in the ad. It is likely that your great offer is what attracted the user to click through to the landing page, and delivering that offer clearly is a key step to conversion.


Landing Pages

Content on the landing page should be original and valuable to the user and relevant to the keyword and ad they have already engaged with.

Set user expectations: When users visit your site, make sure to deliver what was promoted in the ad in a clear, predictable manner. Set forth predictable site navigation, standard information about your service/product, and how users can expect to engage with your business.

Collecting personal information: When collecting personally identifiable information (PII) from users to help engage them with your business, ensure that you are collecting only the amount of information that is necessary and relevant to the product or service, and that you offer a complete privacy policy on your page that users can reference.

Be original: Landing pages with stock content or lists of links to other pages can dilute the overall value of your offering, can cause a negative search experience for users, and affect the editorial compliance of your campaign.

I hope you’ll reference these tips as you work to build and enhance your keywords, ads, and landing pages. If you are interested in reading more in depth detail around quality and relevance, feel free to peruse a related blog post Quality is KEY! Simple Changes You Can Make for Editorial Success with Microsoft adCenter.

Cheers to strong relevance and a successful campaign!

Michelle Martin
Network Quality Services 

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