If you have been using Google Adwords for a while, you are certainly familiar with the pain that was minimum bid. Google changed the concept to 1st-page bid but the underlying concept is the same. If your landing page is deemed to be not optimized for your search term, you are going to have to pay more to stay on the first page. After all Ad Rank = Quality Score * mCPC.

Many of us have been slapped by Google in the past. You start a campaign, and you run it for a while for $0.20 per click just to find out after a couple of weeks that Google is asking for a minimum of $5 per click to show you on the first page (not the first position). That’s really painful and if you are running affiliate offers through Adwords, I doubt you can make enough revenue to cover your costs.

Now people pray to God hoping for Google to change its mind and reduce your min bids. Here is the thing. God’s not going to fix your problem. There is actually a simple way to get around it. All you got to do is use Google Adwords keyword tool to figure out what Google sees on your page.

Just select the second option (Website content) and use your own URL to figure out what keywords Google comes up with your site. If the keyword that you are bidding on is on that list, then that could be why you are not getting the excellent quality score that you have always been wanting.

Your listing’s quality score is not just about the keywords that are on your page. You have to truly optimize your landing page to ensure Google that your page is relevant to the phrase you are bidding on, so don’t expect to get “great” quality score by just dropping keywords on your pages. But Google’s free tool does allow you to find out what areas you can improve on. With tools from Google, who needs paid tools!