Google Adwords is becoming so competitive that unless you are getting great quality scores from Google, you are going to have break your bank to get any decent traffic. I remember when I started my financial site a while back. Google was asking me to pay, get this, $10 a click to be in the top 10! That’s like paying a million dollars to get a used car. Of course, if you are getting a great quality score from Google, you are going to pay less.

It is apparent that getting “great” quality score from Google on your landing pages is a must. But do you really need to create one landing page per each keyword? I have been hearing from some experts that you don’t have to do that to get great quality scores. I really don’t have any evidence for that argument, so I will consider it B.S. for now. Here is what has worked for me. You create a landing page for each keyword, and you start your title tag with that same keyword. You also use the same keyword throughout your content. I have tried this many times, and it works like a charm. Keep in mind that the keyword “books” is different from “book.” You need to create one landing page for “book” and one landing page for “books” (just an example).

Is this approach inefficient? You may say so. But that’s the only sure way to get great quality scores from Google. Everybody knows about LSI and all that nonesense. I am not saying an LSI-based approach to landing page optimization doesn’t work. I just personally have not had 100% success with that approach. I have had 100% success with the above approach, and that’s why I recommend it. And if you are a hard-worker, willing to put hours and resources to implement this, more power to you. But you can always trust the “experts” and get no results. It really depends on your taste.

If you have been doing Google Adwords for a while, you probably know the bid prices are not going any lower. If you are in any somewhat common niche, you are going to have to pay through your nose to get those highly coveted places on the first page. But if you have a great quality score, you can reduce your bids dramatically. Getting the quality score without too much work can be a bit complicated. Google has gone out of its way to penalize thin sites, and the mini landing page approach does not work as well as it used to.

That’s where you can use articles to your advantage. Services such as SimplyPLR allow you to create fully-fledged websites for every niche without having to spend time and write the articles yourself. The good thing about private label articles is that you can actually change the content and insert your own keywords in there. The key to getting a good quality score on Google is optimizing down to molecules for individual keywords. By that I mean you should use the “exact” keyword you are trying to bid for in your text.

PLRs are usually written around one keyword, which makes these great for quality score optimization purposes. All you would need to do is make small changes to the article and replace the main keyword with yours, and you can have more success with Google Adwords as a result of it. Paying Google $10, $20 or more per click just doesn’t make sense unless you have money to burn. I don’t know about you, but considering the amount of effort involved to use PLR articles to create Adwords ready sites, this is all well worth it.

Your click through rate is one of the most important factors that can be the difference between you running a successful pay per click marketing business Google or achieve utter failure on Adwords. Google’s ranking system is sophisticated. There is no question about that, and while you can burn your money through the first position by putting up an obscenely high amount for your Max CPC, you should try to optimize your Quality score to pay less to Google.

Your ad CTR is a big part of your quality score. Google wants to take your money and a low CPR means they are leaving money on the table. So what they do is raise your min bids to either make you optimize your ads or pay the penalty for your negligence. While increasing your CTR dramatically will depend on many factors, there are simple steps that you can take to gradually increase your click through rate. Here is how:

• Call to action: you should try to use call to action phrases in your ads. Google does put limitations on what you can use in your ads. For instance, Google frowns up using the word “click here” in your ads. But you can use the word “apply now” or similar words, and that usually does the job.
• Keyword Phrases: make sure you have your keywords in the ad. Google emboldens phrases that folks have searched for on Google if you have them in your ads.
• Keyword Insertion: going back to the previous point, if you have an Adwords with more than a few keyword phrases, you can’t possibly fit your exact keyword inside your ad. That’s why you should use Google keyword insertion to automatically show the keywords in your ads that are relevant to what people are searching for. Use {keyword: keywords phrase} in your title, your body, or your URL. You can read more about it here.
• Symbols: Google is not comfortable with folks who use symbols such as “@” or “!” in their ads to attract the searchers’ attention. Having said that, you can still use “!” in your ads body (one time). So you should take advantage of it to set yourself apart from your competitors and attract the searcher’s attention.
• Unique Feature/Benefit: you have heard it before. Being unique can make you stand out in a crowd. Google Adwords has enabled lots of folks to come online and participate, which means in most niches the competition has intensified. What that means for you is that you should provide a unique benefit/feature in your ad to make people want to click on your ad. I would put a major feature or benefit on the first line of the add to grab the attention of the searcher as quickly as possible. Make sure your benefit is relevant to the product you are advertising.

Your CTR on Adwords is only a part of the equation but is a big part of it. In fact, without a good CTR, you are not going to be able to compete effectively. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be able to achieve respectable CTR with your ads. And don’t forget to test your ads! That’s all that matters in the end.

Google is famous for throwing curve-balls at us marketers once in a while. In fact, those curveballs have been coming to us more frequently in the past few months. But the one factor that is still important to your success on Google Adwords is quality score. Google doesn’t tell us the exact formula behind Adwords Quality Score, but it does give us enough information on landing page and ad quality to com up with quick ways to improve the quality score throughout our campaigns.

5 Quick Ways To Improve Google Adwords Quality Score

• Landing Page Title: your landing page title is one of the most important factors when it comes to improving your quality score and SEO rankings. Make sure you include your ad keywords in your title (between “<title></title>”).
• Landing Page Header: h1 and h2 tags are very important in helping Google determine your landing page’s relevance to the keyword you are bidding on. Make sure you include your keywords in your headers. But don’t overdo it. This should be done in a natural way or it could back fire.
• Text Ad Quality: having your keywords in your text ads not only helps improve your quality score but it can nab you a higher CTR. Use your keywords in your ad’s text (hint: use dynamic keyword insertion for the best possible results).
• Ad URL Quality: having a keyword in your ad URL could also help with your quality score. It can also increase your CTR. You should test all these things to make sure you are getting the biggest bang for your advertising bucks.
• Landing Page Keywords: Google Adwords keyword tool has helped me a lot with making my landing pages optimized by adding LSI keywords to my pages. You should use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find the related keywords to your ad phrases and use them throughout your pages. You should also use a combination of your ad phrase + an LSI keyword in your alt tags or meta tags.

When optimizing your pages for paid search or organic search, you want to make sure that things look natural to Google. A page that is written for Google only is not going to convert too well. Always keep your visitors in mind, but the above steps are so simple that you’d be missing out big time if you ignore them.

P.S. I’ll write a few more posts on Quality Score and how I have improved my own quality scores with my campaigns. Let me know if you want me to write about something specific or if you have a specific question about Google Adwords Quality Score.