I am struggling with a few keywords in the "Data Science Certification" niche where our Quality Score is stuck at 4/10. My landing page load speed is good and the CTR is average. What are some advanced SEM tactics to boost the "Ad Relevance" and "Landing Page Experience" components specifically to lower our CPC?
3 answers
Improving Quality Score is often about the "Expected CTR" and "Ad Relevance" alignment. One trick that worked for us in 2023 was implementing Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) in our headlines. This ensures the user sees their exact search term in the ad, which naturally boosts CTR. Also, check your "Landing Page Experience" by ensuring the keyword appears in the H1 tag and the first paragraph of your page. Google’s crawlers need to see a direct semantic link between the ad group and the destination URL. If your page is too generic, the "Relevance" score will never move past a 5, regardless of your bid.
Great advice on DKI, but have you checked if your mobile site speed is passing Core Web Vitals, or are you only looking at the desktop performance metrics?
Try breaking your ad groups into "Single Keyword Ad Groups" (SKAGs). It’s old school but it creates the tightest possible relevance between the search term and the ad copy.
I agree with Melissa. SKAGs are a lot of work to set up, but they are still the most effective way to reach a 9/10 or 10/10 Quality Score for your top-performing terms.
Brian, that is a crucial point. Many marketers forget that Google Ads uses a mobile-first crawler for landing page assessments. If your mobile LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is over 2.5 seconds, your "Landing Page Experience" score will take a massive hit, which directly inflates your cost-per-click.