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Last week, we discussed what Quality Score was, what factors Google uses when determining it, and what it helps determine for your PPC campaign. This week’s installment in our Quality Score series teaches you how to improve your Quality Score and showcases 5 techniques to raise your Click Through Rate (CTR).

Before moving forward it’s always helpful to remember the basics. Be sure to read “What Is Quality Score & How Does It Affect Your PPC Campaign,” to refresh your memory on the subject.

When trying to raise Quality Score, where is the best place to start?

When trying to raise your Quality Score, start with your CTR. This is the history of how often your keyword led to clicks on your ad. Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at several ways you can improve the CTR on your PPC campaign.

Techniques that help Raise CTR:

1. Always bid high on your Company Name & Brand.

• Bidding high on these keywords gives you a huge boost in your historical CTR. This boosts your Quality Score because people are usually searching for your company name.
• Bidding high also lowers the normalized Quality Score and historical account CTR of competitors that are bidding on your brand or company name. As a result, you pay less while your competitors pay more.

2. Use strong calls to action & strong words.

• Use strong words in your title & description. Google recommends doing this in your PPC ad’s title and description. Phrases such as “Download, Free, New, Save, Safe” add emphasis to your ad’s titles & description.
• Use strong calls to action. Phrases such as “Download now, free trial, sign up today, order now, try new version” give your ad a definitive call to action.

3. Treat your display URL like marketing copy:

• Add a product name, service, feature, etc…
• The display URL doesn’t have to be an actual URL.

4. Add an ad extension to your advertisement: 

• Including your address, phone number, extra website page links, and additional product information gives customers more info about your business. Choose the most relevant extension to your business, as you can only show one extension with your ad.
• Ad extensions vary by type. Location, call, social, seller ratings, sitelinks, and product extensions are all different types of extensions to choose from. Pictured below is an example of a product extension:

5. Add sitelinks to your advertisement:

• This promotes individual pages from your website other than your main web page.  While sitelinks are still considered an ad extension, they are the only extension that will show along with a location, call, social, seller ratings, or product extensions, giving added value to your ad.

Conclusion

The techniques listed in this article are easily in your control, help improve your CTR, and raise your Quality Score. Adding extra features like ad extensions, sitelinks, and URL marketing copy results in added value to your ad. Additionally, tweaking your ad copy to include strong words and strong calls to action results in a clear and concise message.  If you keep these points in mind while remembering that bidding high on your company and brand name helps lower the normalized Quality Score while boosting your historical CTR, you are golden. If you found this article helpful check back periodically for more articles on SEO, SEM, Web Development, and Web Design, or subscribe to our RSS feed. Please don’t forget to follow us on Facebook or Twitter for more great industry tips and information as well.

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