In the dynamic world of digital marketing, understanding the intricacies of Google Ads Campaigns is a crucial aspect for any business aiming to maximize its online presence. One of the key components that often determines the success of these campaigns is the Quality Score. This score is not just a number; it’s a reflection of the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. It’s a critical factor that can significantly influence your ad performance and the financial aspects of your campaigns.

Understanding Quality Scores in Google Ads Campaigns

Importance of Quality Scores

Quality Scores are Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. It is an aggregated estimate of your overall performance in ad auctions and is used to determine your cost per click (CPC). This score is then multiplied by your maximum bid to decide your ad rank in the ad auction process.

The importance of Quality Scores in Google Ads Campaigns cannot be overstated. A higher Quality Score can lead to lower costs and better ad positions. It’s a reflection of the health of your ads and an indicator of whether your ad strategy aligns with the needs and preferences of your target audience.

Factors Influencing Quality Scores

Quality Scores are influenced by several factors. These include the relevance of each keyword to its ad group, the quality and relevance of your landing page, and the relevance and performance of your ad text2.

Each of these factors plays a vital role in determining your Quality Score. For instance, if your keywords closely match the content of your ad, it increases the relevance, thereby positively influencing your Quality Score. Similarly, if your landing page provides a high-quality user experience and is closely related to your ad content and keywords, it can significantly boost your Quality Score.

Effective Strategies to Improve Quality Scores

Improving your Quality Scores involves strategies that enhance the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing page.

Keyword Relevance

The relevance of your keywords is a crucial factor in improving your Quality Score. This involves using keywords in your ad text that match the terms your potential customers might use when searching for your products or services.

For instance, if you run a bakery and want to advertise your special homemade bread, you should consider using keywords like “homemade bread,” “fresh homemade bread,” or “best homemade bread” in your ad text. This increases the chances of your ad appearing when potential customers search for these terms, thereby increasing the relevance of your keywords and potentially improving your Quality Score.

Ad Relevance

Ad relevance is another critical factor in improving your Quality Score. This involves creating compelling ad text that directly relates to the keywords you’re targeting, thus making your ad more likely to be clicked.

For example, if one of your keywords is “best homemade bread,” your ad text could be something like “Try our best homemade bread, freshly baked every day!” This ad text is compelling and directly relates to the keyword, making it more likely to be clicked by users searching for “best homemade bread.”

Landing Page Experience

The experience users have when they land on your webpage after clicking your ad also plays a significant role in determining your Quality Score. Improving the landing page experience involves ensuring that your landing page is relevant to your ad text and keyword, useful to your customers, and transparent about your business and what it offers.A high-quality landing page should be easy to navigate, provide the information that users are looking for, and have a clear call to action. For instance, if your ad is about “best homemade bread,” your landing page should prominently feature your homemade bread, provide information about how it’s made, why it’s the best, and how customers can purchase it.

Monitoring and Adjusting Your Strategies

Improving your Quality Score is not a one-time task. It requires constant monitoring and adjustment of your strategies based on their performance.

Regular Performance Check

Regularly checking the performance of your keywords, ads, and landing page can help you identify areas that need improvement. This involves analyzing your click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, and other key metrics that can provide insights into the effectiveness of your ads and landing page.

For example, if you notice that a particular keyword has a low click-through rate, it might indicate that the keyword is not very relevant to your ad or that your ad is not compelling enough to prompt users to click. In such cases, you might need to adjust your keyword strategy or improve your ad text.

Making Necessary Adjustments

Based on your performance check, you can make necessary adjustments to your keywords, ad text, or landing page to improve their relevance and quality, and consequently, your Quality Scores.

For instance, if your landing page has a high bounce rate, it might indicate that users are not finding the information they need or that the page is difficult to navigate. In such cases, you might need to improve the content and design of your landing page.

Conclusion

Improving Quality Scores in Google Ads Campaigns is a continuous process that involves understanding the factors that influence these scores and implementing strategies to enhance the relevance and quality of your keywords, ads, and landing page. Regular performance checks and adjustments are also crucial to ensure the effectiveness of your strategies and achieve better ad performance9.

Reference:

WordStream. (n.d.). How to Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score (and Earn More $$). Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/adwords-quality-score

DataFeedWatch. (2022). 7 Powerful Ways to Improve Quality Score in 2022. Retrieved from https://www.datafeedwatch.com/blog/improve-quality-score

You’ve heard of SEO (search engine optimization). You’ve probably gotten sales calls from agencies trying to sell you on it. But you might not know as much about SEM.

This guide will teach you everything you need to know about SEM, including what makes it different from SEO and how you can apply SEM strategies successfully at your business.

 

What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?

 

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing.

It’s exactly what it sounds like — marketing on search engines. But it’s exclusively outbound (you finding customers rather than them finding you through inbound marketing tactics like SEO).

You’re placing paid ads on a search engine results page (SERP). This is usually called a PPC, or pay-per-click, ad.

Through SEM, you’re able to bump up the visibility of your website on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo through paid advertising initiatives.

And if you’ve ever searched project management software or the like, you’ve probably seen monday.com’s ads.

Google is by far the biggest search engine in the world, and thus gets the lion’s share of SEM attention.

81% of people start their search for some kind of product or service to buy on a search engine, and 94% of all those searches happen on Google.

So it’s probably fair that when you think of SEM, you’re thinking of a Google search ad. 

A paid search ad uses the power of popular search platforms to spread your offer while targeting your audience (people searching for that offer) specifically.

Using SEM you can customize your budget, deciding what you want to spend and what your payment criteria will be. You can pay per 1,000 or 1 million impressions, pay per click, pay per conversion, and so on. It’s similar in many ways to social media PPC advertising, which are those sponsored ads that you’ve often seen on your Facebook, Instagram, or any other of your go-to social media platforms.

You pin down the success of your SEM campaign by gauging your click-through rate. That’s the number of people that see your ad as opposed to the number of people who actually clicked on it.

 

What’s the difference between SEM and SEO?

 

It’s not uncommon for beginner marketers to get SEM and SEO mixed up. As we mentioned before, their names are irritatingly similar.

But there are major differences at play here.

SEM is paid search advertising. You’re creating ads, targeting your audience, deciding on an ad spend, and then putting your offer out there to searchers.

SEO is the optimization of your website’s content (and the website itself) to increase the frequency that you pop up in organic traffic on a given search engine results page (SERP — yay acronyms!). You can use a tool like SEMRush to step up your SEO capabilities.

This is done through a series of content tweaks and linking initiatives both on and off your site.

 

The major difference between the two can be summed up in speed:

 

SEM gives instant results. SEO takes time.

It typically takes up to 3 to 6 months for SEO to deliver any kind of return on investment.

SEM, on the other hand, starts showing your ads to searchers seconds after being activated.

Despite their differences, these two marketing philosophies work closely together.

 

Do you need both SEM and SEO?

 

You will get the best results if you use SEM and SEO in conjunction with your regular digital marketing strategy.

While your SEO strategies are building momentum, start generating targeted traffic with an investment into SEM. This will drive visitors to your site and increase engagement and awareness.

Once you’re ranking on the first page for a few of your target keyphrases (with SEO) you can step back on heavy investment into SEM — retaining ads on only a few high-performing keywords.

SEO offers a better ROI over time (given the “evergreen” nature of the content), but SEM can’t be overlooked. An impressive 40% of all web traffic comes from organic search results while 28% comes from search ad initiatives like SEM.

 

SEO improvements help keep your SEM strong

 

How does that work?

There is a quality score assigned to each site by Google.

If people are clicking away from your site and having a bad experience, your quality score dips, and Google will then charge you more per click for your SEM ads.

SEO enhancements to a page help improve the user experience and, in turn, raise your quality score and lower your ad spend.

 

How can you succeed at SEM?

 

SEM can help you succeed in a number of ways. It helps you generate fast revenue, it increases brand awareness, it lets you specifically target your audience, and it can fit into virtually any budget.

You know why you should engage in SEM, but you don’t know how just yet.

To start off, an organization is the key to success here. You can easily track your ads using monday.com’s marketing calendar. Here you can invite your teammates to work on campaigns, determine the budget and add notes all in one place.

Once you know that you have everything organized, it’s time to really zero in on maximizing your marketing campaign.

1, Focus on customer intent

The first thing you have to determine is customer intent. Why are customers searching for your terms?

Once you know that, you can make your Google ad directly appeal to their wants and needs.

You’re going to need to go through a lot of demographic information for that to work.

That means constantly reviewing your active, won, and lost leads to look for similarities and differences.

There’s a lot that you can learn from past success, failure, and current opportunities alike.

There are three major search intent categories that most people fall into. They are typically performing searches for:

• Entertainment
• Research
• Products

By knowing which category makes up the bulk of searches for the terms you want to include in your SEM plan, you can determine if their intent coincides with your link. For example, if you choose a term that most people are typing in for entertainment or research, it’s not going to do much for you when you’re trying to sell products.

Make sure that you’re reviewing your leads in monday.com’s Lead Management template to stay on top of demographic trends, including how your audience’s problems and intent are shifting over time.

2, Stick to your budget

Determine what you can afford to spend on SEM and stick with it.

You also need to know what you have to spend in order to be competitive.

That means you need to budget for more than just ad spend.

It takes company time to perform research. Then someone has to write out the copy for your ads. And someone needs to create the media you’re going to include. Finally, someone has to create the landing page. All of this adds up to money out of pocket.

monday.com’s Budget Tracker template works very well when tracking your ongoing expenses and making sure that you remain comfortably in budget.

3, Optimize your keywords

Before you run your first ad you’re going to have to determine which keywords to pursue. That means performing a ton of keyword research to determine the most relevant and highly searched terms for your industry.

Search marketing platforms like Google Ads give you the option of creating ad groups for various terms that go together. This feature is especially helpful if you’re working with a number of different audiences or trying to appeal to different issues plaguing the same audience.

It’s also a perfect opportunity for A/B testing. That is when you run two campaigns with the same goal simultaneously to determine which is working better.

Figure out how your keywords line up with the ad copy and find ways to naturally weave those terms into your content.

Do not just stuff keywords in there haphazardly. One of the factors in determining when and where your content shows is the actual quality of the ad itself. So make sure that it’s legible. Don’t sacrifice quality for one more keyword.

You also need to utilize negative keywords to make sure you’re limiting waste. Negative keywords are disqualifying terms.

If you’re trying to sell cars in a specific area, you might choose “Rent” or “Rental” as negative keywords. Someone looking to rent a car might see your ad on a search result and click on it. They have no potential for conversion, but you were charged for that click.

You can only stay on top of these factors if you’re organized. That’s why you need to keep track of how you’re creating your ad content and what keywords (and negative keywords) you’re using with the monday.com Content Planning template.

 

Conclusion

 

Whether you’re calling it PPC or SEM, this is an important piece of modern digital marketing. It should never be lumped together or confused with SEO, as they are two completely different marketing functions that happen to have similar-sounding names.

Your ability to succeed with an SEM strategy will be reliant on your ability to track your various ads and plan your ad copy and content in advance. For that, we highly recommend monday.com’s Content Planning and Marketing Calendar templates.

Custom Intent Audiences and Custom Affinity Audiences have been combined into Custom Audiences.

Rather than choosing from a preset list of options from Google, we’re able to create our own audiences based on their interests and, in some instances, their search history. I’ve really come to enjoy using Custom Audiences, so I want to take the time and walk you through all of the options available for you to leverage for better ad performance. They include:

• Interest & behavior
• Types of websites browsed
• Types of apps downloaded
• Category of the physical location visited

What are the Custom Audience options in Google Ads?

Custom Audiences are used for display and YouTube ads. Let’s go through what each targeting type means and how it can be used. I’ll also provide strategies for getting the most out of them and show you how to set up Custom Audiences in your account.

1, Interest and behavior targeting

What we’re trying to do here is almost use targeting similar to keywords to find users who have either been conducting research around specific topics or have shown interest in a product, solution, service while on Google.

For example, if you’re trying to target users who are looking to buy a used car, you might type in something like “best used cars”, then Google will show you some other phrases you could target based on what they’ve seen users search for. As you add more keywords, you’ll see the Audience Insights chart on the right adjust based on the audience you’ve selected to include.

Google properties vs the Google Display Network

One of the best features of these Custom Audiences is when you plan to use this list on Google-owned properties.

The two buttons at the top of this builder provide a little insight and to build the audience you’ll have to choose one or the other:

The first option here means that you’ll be targeting users just as mentioned before: based on their interests and purchase intentions.

But the second option is where things get more interesting: People who searched for any of these terms on Google.

This means you’re effectively doing search retargeting for any of the terms you add (and any terms “similar” to them) as long as your ad is going to run on a Google-owned property.

Google-owned properties include:

• YouTube
• Google Discover
• Gmail

Unfortunately, the Google Display Network is not one of those owned properties. Each website is owned by individual users or companies and has opted into Google AdSense to monetize its site.

In the end, we’re able to retarget people based on what they searched for on Google, then put our relevant ads in front of them when they are watching videos on YouTube, checking their email, or discovering new topics on mobile. Pretty powerful stuff!

 

2, People who browse types of websites

 

Below the keyword section, there is a new header that says “Expand audience by also including” which is then followed by a list of three additional types of targeting.

The first is People who browse types of websites.

For this section, Google is asking you to provide the types of websites, in URL form, that your target audience would visit. As it mentions, this is not a way to target those specific website placements, but rather to capitalize on the audience insights from those sites to find new users.

If you know the places where your customers hang out online, this can be a very powerful type of targeting.

For websites, stay away from broader sites and instead focus on industry-specific and closely related sites. For the used car example above, it’s a better idea for you to include websites to local used car dealers or larger national used car websites than simply targeting the Ford, Chevrolet, or Volkswagen websites. Sure, users on those sites might be interested in buying a car, but people could have lots of other reasons for visiting those sites than simply buying a used car.  

 

3, People who use types of apps

 

The next targeting option is very similar to the website targeting options but includes apps instead.

Think of the types of apps your potential customers would use. This could be either a permanently installed app or something more temporary. 

As I type in the names, Google automatically populates a list and suggests apps I should add based on the themes I’m working with.

Think of the different types of apps users might use to either help them make a purchase or show interest in your product or service and how you can leverage those for Custom Audience building.

 

4, People who visited certain places

 

The last type of targeting option is focused on the types of places your customers have visited recently.

These are going to be categories of physical locations rather than the individual places themselves, but these can be immensely useful depending on who you’re trying to reach.

 

How do I set up a Custom Audience?

 

The name Custom Audiences might suggest that you would build these in your audience manager, but that’s actually not the case.

To build Custom Audiences, you’ll need to start by either creating a new display or video campaign or navigating to an existing ad group where you can leverage audiences.

Once you’re in the Audiences tab, click the blue plus button. Toward the bottom of the list, you’ll see Custom Audiences as an option. If you have Custom Audiences created, you’ll be able to choose them from the list at the top. If you don’t, then you can create a new one by choosing “+ Custom Audience” at the bottom of the list.

 

Go beyond the keyword with Custom Audiences

 

Although Google targeting options continue to change with some frequency, I think we’re in a great spot to leverage Custom Audiences right now. There are many different targeting options that go beyond broad interests. We effectively have Search Retargeting across the Google-owned network, but we can also target people based on specific websites, apps, and physical locations they’ve visited. Talk about going beyond the keyword. Next time you’re looking to spruce up your targeting on Google, don’t miss out on testing Custom Audiences to see how they can work for you.

 

Information You May Also Interest

• How to have a better target customer group?
• How do choose the right keywords for Google ads?

The Difference Between SEO and SEM

Advantages of Search Engine Optimization

 

Advantages of Search Engine Marketing

SEO vs SEM: Which Is Better?

Midea, a famous Chinese brand but probably never been aware of in other lands. This Chinese electrical appliance manufacturer decided to expand to a new market in New Zealand.

Within a short period of time, they already achieved their target.

And how does that happen so easily?

Yep, they have been cooperating with Horntech digital marketing company to build up their branding and impression to the public.

Web development

Horntech has provided a full online marketing service for Midea by helping them create customized websites. One of the most complex things about step into a new market is the local logistic system. It is complicated and frustrated to learn. But horn tech solved this issue by design the website with logistics system solutions.

As an official partner of Shopify, HornTech developed a set of simple and easy-to-use Shopify logistics App. It can accurately calculate the shipping cost of the order to consumers in real-time according to the volume and weight of the product, and the zip code of the destination. It opened up the logistics barriers from offline to online.

Multiple payment options

With the help of several payment options for customers, it totally makes this process more convenient.

Internal synchronous multi-platform ERP

When setting up Midea’s official website in New Zealand, one requirement was to accurately synchronize the website, internal ERP (Enterprise resource planning), and New Zealand’s local trademe platform.

Accurate synchronization of multi-platform orders and internal inventory product information is an impossible demand for many local Chinese merchants. However, Horntech provided Midea with top solutions within two weeks. and within six weeks of signing the contract, Midea’s official online website is already operating. It Greatly improved Midea’s social capital.

 

 

Integrated marketing

After discussed of Midea’s demands, Horntech came up with a unique marketing strategy by apply google ads; social media ads; and SEO services to make all of this possible.

And lets the data speak the truth:

Midea’s website browsing users reached nearly 10,000 per month. 80% of new users and 50% of transactions.

Google display ads▼

 

 

Google shopping ads▼

Google search ads▼

 

Google location store visit ads▼

 

Google SEO

By optimizing the search engine, the organic traffic of Midea’s official website has increased significantly in half a year. The number of website browsing users reached nearly 1,000 per month, and the transaction accounted for 10% of the total.

 

Midea’s new website has only been online for half a year. HornTech has brought Midea’s organic search volume on multiple highly competitive product keywords to the homepage. And this result can only be achieved in one year by another company.

Social media marketing (Facebook & Instagram ads)

Website browsing users accounted for 15% of the total brought through Facebook and Instagram.

 

More than 3,500 page views of the website brought by these two social platforms per month.

With the help of horn tech, Midea achieves 60% turnover growth in just a few months, and the return on advertising investment was more than 20 times. They rapidly enhanced Midea’s branding status and made a big influence in the New Zealand home appliances market.

 

Why choose HornTech?

This young and motivated team provides advanced digital marketing services and IT technical support for the world.

Web design& development

HornTech is the largest Chinese developer and partner of Shopify, WordPress, and Woocommerce. It only takes 7 days to get your website and e-commerce platform online.

Google ads

HornTech is the official certified agent of Google Advertising. It has a professional English advertising optimization team and provides customers with services such as free account opening and multilingual services.

Social media marketing

HornTech is Facebook’s official Marketing Partner. We can help you to maximize conversion and reducing overseas promotion costs, it allowing you to market globally without leaving home.

 

Google SEO

HornTech’s unique SEO search engine optimization method can quickly help you increase your SEO organic traffic and achieve business goals

If you want to talk with us about your business, welcome to contact us.

 

Website：https://www.horntech.co.nz/

Contact：+64 93946639

Address：636, Great South Road, Ellerslie, Auckland