 |
2 Ways You Could Be Killing Your Quality Score Without Knowing ItPosted by Amber on October 15, 2008 in Advanced PPC Strategies, Google AdWords Quality Score |
A lot of times when we get new clients, they already have an existing PPC account they’re managing, but for obvious reasons needed the help of a PPC firm. The first thing I normally like to do when getting these clients is a complete re-organization of the account to immediately begin improving the structure for Quality Score and Quality Index purposes. However I have learned that taking that approach can actually hurt your overall quality score, which obviously isn’t how you want a new account to start off.
In this post I’ll give you a few tips on what many advertisers do when inheriting a new account that can sabotage their quality score without them ever realizing it.
1. Moving too many keywords/ad groups too fast: When I inherit a new account too many times I see 10 to 20 ad groups piled into one campaign. What I like to do when I see this is open up Adwords Editor, and begin copying and pasting keywords into new ad groups, creating new campaigns for these ad groups and writing new ads all in the same day. However this can be detrimental to your account Quality Score. The reasoning behind this according to my Google rep is that any positive performance could be lost when you make a lot of changes at once, and she definitely recommends making changes more slowly. In addition, she says that you should rotate in new ad texts instead of deleting old ads and adding in new ones. That way you can let the new ads build up positive history for a few weeks before deleting the old ads, and you’re less likely to experience a drop in Quality Score.
2. Making large bid changes: The next thing I would typically do is find keywords that have many conversions with a low CPL and begin increasing their keyword bids if possible. Please note that making small bid increases at one time is okay. What I’m talking about it making a lot of large bid increases or decreases to one account at the same time. This too can be harmful to your Quality Score for the same reason mentioned above.
In the end, when inheriting a new account that is already set up, take it one day at a time. Plan accordingly what you want/need to do day by day.
- Our Greatest Hits for October!
- Flying Blind with Ask.com
- Expand Your View on Google’s Quality Score and See Your Campaign Grow!
- Give Us Your Two Cents on the Google AdWords Quality Score
- Blog News Roundup for December 26th
October 15th, 2008 at 9:05 am
If this is the case, I’ve been annihilating my clients quality scores for a long time. Damn…
October 15th, 2008 at 9:31 am
@ Bags,
Doh! The upside to that I guess is that you’re getting lots of great experience improving your Quality Score!?!?! : )
October 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I’ve found that while immediate changes may impact your quality score intially it seems that since you’re improving the overall campaign or account your campaigns or adgroups gain back or receive an even better quality score rather quickly. So i saw that initial increase in cost but was followed shortly by a much improved campaign.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I’m curious how long this has been the case? Like @Bags said, if this has been the case for a while I’ve doing a lot more worse than good initially for my clients! This also makes it tough as an advertiser (and is similar to the frustration clients have with SEO) they want action NOW and results NOW. To have to come back to them and say well, Google makes us do things slowly sounds like a cop-out.
So, here’s a follow up question for the Google rep .. if the quality score is horrible or poor when taking over the account, is it still not advisable to make large changes? after all, you wouldn’t be losing a lot of positive data.
Thoughts?
October 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Hi Jon, I spoke with my Google rep and this is what they had to say about making large changes to an account with a poor quality score, “Hypothetically, making mass changes to accounts with poor Quality Score shouldn’t have as negative an effect as making mass changes to accounts with good Quality Score, but I would still proceed cautiously if the account has been running for a long time and is accruing a fair amount of impressions.” In translation making large changes right off the bat can still have a negative effect on the amount of impressions you receive. Hope this helps!
October 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
@Amber – thanks so much for the fast and thorough response!
I guess, when you take a step back, it makes sense for a strategic rollout of changes anyway as organization takes time as does re-writing ad copy, expanding kw research, etc. Definitely a mind shift in implementation though! Thanks again for the quality post!
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Google Adwords is like a big machine rolling along… you can’t just yank out gears wheels and drive shafts without impacting progress. But if you work at a nuts and bolts level while learning the account, you usually do a lot less damage along the way. Intuitive incrementalism.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 am
@ John, no problem, glad I can help!
@ Michelle, you’re absolutely right. For me it’s difficult though, if I get a new account that is a mess, I just want to clean until it’s all nice and organized. Now I have to take it slow and steady. Well, hopefully it will improve QS issues along the way. Thanks for reading!
November 6th, 2008 at 5:35 am
With regards the:
“In addition, she says that you should rotate in new ad texts instead of deleting old ads and adding in new ones.”
Surely, people aren’t just deleting fresh/ current copy to replace it with newer copy?
Its all about split tests, split tests and more split tests!!