An advertiser enters a keyword and ad into the system. Now what? With traditional advertising, the work is done. However, with online advertising, monitoring performance and maintenance are part of the advertising model. Most importantly, advertisers should pay attention to quality score.
Quality score
This tool measures an ad’s relevance and sets the minimum cost per click (CPC) bid required for an ad to enter the auction. Ads with higher quality scores tend to:
- Get more clicks
- Be shown in higher positions on search results pages
- Bring more businesses and customers together
Keyword status
Keyword status determines whether an ad is eligible to run in the auction. In other words, it determines whether a keyword is eligible to trigger ads on search pages. The keyword status appears in the ad group view. There are two keyword statuses:
- Active: The keyword is eligible to run in the auction (the maximum CPC bid is above the minimum CPC bid required)
- Inactive for search: The keyword isn’t eligible to run on Google or on Google’s search network because the maximum CPC bid is below the minimum CPC required. (Note that the ad may still be shown on the content network).
If keywords are inactive for search, the system offers a minimum bid required to activate that keyword.
There are four ways to reactivate an inactive-for-search keyword:
1. Increase the keyword’s quality score through optimisation.
2. Increase the keyword’s maximum CPC bid to the minimum bid suggested by the AdWords system.
3. Delete the keyword (if the minimum CPC bid to reactivate it is too expensive).
4. Do nothing. Occasionally, as AdWords gathers more data about a keyword (or as the factors incorporated in quality score change) a keyword may be re-activated without any action from the advertiser. However, doing nothing is not recommended.
How do you determine your quality score?
The minimum CPC bid is the best overall gauge of quality score. This is because they’re inversely related – the less relevant the keyword, the higher the minimum CPC bid, and vice versa. For example, a keyword that performs well over time will has an increased quality score and a decreased minimum CPC bid.
Also, the AdWords discounter automatically reduces the actual CPC paid, so an advertiser pays the lowest price possible to maintain an ad’s position on the page. This means that the higher the quality score, the lower the cost when someone clicks an ad. The best way to maintain a high-quality, cost-effective campaign is to keep close tabs on account metrics. Metrics appear in an advertiser’s account for each campaign, each ad group, and each keyword.
Pay special attention to metrics for keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and click through rate (CTR). Well executed campaigns have:
- ‘Active’ keyword statuses
- Low minimum CPC bids
- High CTRs if a campaign doesn’t have one or several of the above components, it can be improved through optimisation.
