How to Improve Google Ads Quality Score

Is your Google Ads campaign underperforming? One key factor could be your Quality Score.

This important metric plays a crucial role in determining your ad’s position and cost. According to Google, Quality Score measures the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. A higher Quality Score often helps you achieve better ad placements at a lower cost, while a lower score can hinder performance and increase expenses.

Improving your Quality Score requires attention to three key components: Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. By optimizing these elements, you can enhance your campaign's effectiveness, attract more clicks, and reduce ad spend.

Boosting your Quality Score from 5 to 10 can slash your cost-per-click by 50%, dramatically lowering your ad spend. This factor becomes a critical consideration as Google advertising costs continue to add up across industries.

In this post, we’ll explore proven strategies to boost your Quality Score, helping you cut costs and outperform competitors in ad visibility. Start improving your ads today for better results tomorrow.

7 Ways To Improve Google Ads Quality Score

1. Understand the Components of Quality Score

Google determines Quality Score using three main factors:

Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This metric represents the likelihood that users will click your ad when Google shows it. Google estimates this metric using historical data and compares how your ad performs against others targeting similar keywords.

A higher CTR indicates that your ad is compelling and relevant to users. To improve CTR, focus on writing clear, engaging ad copy, using strong calls-to-action (CTAs), and including targeted keywords in your headlines. You can also take inspiration from how small language models handle relevance and efficiency when applied at scale.

Download Your Free Guide Now: A concise, benefit-driven phrase that tells users exactly what they’ll get and prompts immediate action.

Ad Relevance

Ad relevance refers to how closely your ad matches the user's search intent. When your targeted keywords align well with your ad content, Google recognizes your ad as highly relevant to the user's query.

To improve ad relevance, ensure your ad copy clearly reflects the user's search intent and uses relevant keywords in headlines and descriptions.

Organizing your ads into tightly themed ad groups with highly relevant keywords also improves this factor.

Landing Page Experience

Google assesses the relevance, transparency, and usability of your landing page in relation to your ad and keywords. A strong landing page provides valuable content that matches the user's search query, loads quickly, and offers easy navigation, especially on mobile devices.

User experience becomes crucial when users quickly find what they’re looking for and easily complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a form. When this happens, your landing page experience score improves.

Additionally, make your landing page transparent by clearly presenting information about your product or service and guiding users smoothly toward conversion.

2. Optimize Your Ad Copy for Relevance

Your ad copy should closely align with the keywords in your ad group. When you include exact keywords in your ad’s headlines and descriptions, you increase ad relevance, which plays a critical role in improving Quality Score.

When your ad text matches what users are searching for, users engage more with your ad, improving your click-through rate (CTR). Well-crafted ad copy boosts relevance and directly impacts the overall performance of your Google Ads campaign.

Example: If your keyword is “buy running shoes”, your ad headline could say “Shop Running Shoes – Lightweight & Durable.”

3. Improve Your Landing Page Experience

Google assesses the quality of your landing page based on relevance, transparency, and ease of navigation. Your landing page should deliver content that directly relates to the keywords and ads users clicked.

When users land on a page that does not match their expectations, they are more likely to bounce, which negatively affects your Quality Score. Regularly reviewing landing page performance helps you identify friction points and optimize the experience for better ad outcomes.

To enhance landing page experience:

• Relevance: Ensure your landing page matches user search intent and provides the solution users expect after clicking the ad.
• Speed: Improve page load time, especially on mobile devices, to reduce bounce rates. Tools to consider: Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix
• Mobile Optimization: As mobile search continues to grow, ensure your landing page remains fully responsive, loads quickly, and meets Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds (LCP under 2.5s, FID under 100ms, CLS below 0.1).
• Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs): Guide users clearly toward the next step to improve conversion rates.

4. Structure Your Ad Groups Tightly

The structure of your ad groups plays a major role in improving ad relevance. Instead of creating broad or generic ad groups, organize campaigns into tightly themed groups with closely related keywords.

For example, if you sell different types of shoes, create separate ad groups for running shoes, formal shoes, and sandals. This structure allows you to tailor ad copy for each group, improve relevance, and increase the likelihood of clicks.

5. Utilize Negative Keywords

Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches. This approach increases CTR and ensures Google displays your ads to a more relevant audience.

For instance, if you sell luxury watches, you may want to add “cheap” as a negative keyword to avoid showing ads to users searching for low-cost options. Regularly review your Search Terms Report in Google Ads to identify irrelevant queries and add them as negative keywords.

6. Leverage Ad Extensions

Ad extensions add extra information that increases ad visibility and engagement. By adding sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets, you give users more reasons to click on your ad.

This additional information improves user experience and increases conversion potential, which contributes to higher CTR and Quality Score.

Types of Ad Extensions:

• Sitelinks: Direct users to specific pages on your website
• Callouts: Highlight offers, free shipping, or key benefits
• Structured Snippets: Display detailed information about products or services

7. Monitor and Adjust Regularly

Google Ads demands ongoing optimization to deliver consistent results. Continuously monitor campaign performance and adjust ad copy, keywords, bidding strategies, and landing pages.

You can also use Automated Rules or Google Ads Scripts to pause underperforming keywords, adjust bids by time of day, or scale budgets as conversions increase.

A/B Testing

Regularly run A/B tests on key elements such as:

• Headlines: Test different value propositions or keyword placements
• CTAs: Compare variations like “Get Your Free Demo” versus “Start Your 7-Day Trial”
• Landing Page Designs: Test layouts, form lengths, images, and color schemes to identify what drives higher conversions

By leveraging automation for routine adjustments and running systematic A/B tests, you can maintain and improve your Quality Score over time.

Conclusion

Improving your Google Ads Quality Score plays a vital role in achieving better ad placements and reducing costs. By focusing on ad relevance, landing page experience, and CTR, you strengthen campaign performance.

Regular monitoring and optimization help maintain a high Quality Score. Implement these strategies consistently to drive measurable improvements in advertising results.

Need Expert Help?

Improving Quality Score can challenge even experienced advertisers, and expert insight often accelerates results. If you want better performance from your ad campaigns, our performance marketing services can help refine strategy, boost relevance, and reduce wasted spend.

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