4 Reasons You Should Start Obsessing About AdWords Quality Score

Last October, Alistair Dent wrote an interesting – if somewhat misguided – post about why you shouldn’t worry about quality score. I’ve been meaning to respond since I read the piece, but hey – better late than never, right?

I want to explain why you should, in fact, be obsessed with your quality score. OK, maybe not “obsessed,” as it’s probably not healthy to obsess about anything, but your quality score isveryimportant and you’d be crazy to ignore it.

Your quality score should keep you up at night. When you do finally manage to drift off into a fitful sleep, you should be dreaming about it – or having nightmares about it, depending on what it actually is.

Simply put, if you’re an AdWords advertiser, improving your Quality Score should be at the very top of your agenda. Why? Let’s go over four reasons why Quality Scores are so important.

1. Better Positioning

The AdWords game is a lot like real estate – it’s all about location. Although there are numerous factors that determine your ads’ positioning, Quality score is an important metric. Google makes more money from ads with a high probability of being clicked, and that are positioned prominently on SERPs and across the network.

Quality score isn’t precisely the same as predicted click-through rate – but the two are pretty close. However, this is where some AdWords users lose their way.

While some advertisers might think that throwing money at a campaign by bidding higher on competitive terms is an easy solution for overcoming a poor quality score, this isn’t the case. If it was, then advertisers with terrible ads could compensate by simply bidding more. This wouldn’t add any value to the user experience and would result in poor-quality ads being displayed more prominently – hardly an ideal situation.

In the preceding figure, you can see that ad positioning is determined by Ad Rank. This, in turn, is calculated by multiplying the Max Bid by Quality Score. Ads with higher Quality Scores, but lower Max Bids, could place higher, as shown in the figure above.

2. Lower CPC

The second reason you should be preoccupied with your ads’ Quality Score is the impact it has on how much you’re charged per click. Sure, huge businesses with vast monthly AdWords budgets might not be too worried about their CPC, but for the average advertiser, a high CPC can make or break the effectiveness – and basic economic viability – of a campaign.

Breaking down how Quality Score affects your CPC is simple. CPC is calculated using the formula of [Ad Rank of the ad below yours / Quality Score + $0.01]. Based on this formula, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your CPC will be – so why shouldn’t advertisers be obsessed with their Quality Score?

3. Lower CPA

The importance of a high Quality Score doesn’t end with lower CPC. Quality Score also has a significant impact on Cost Per Acquisition (or Cost Per Conversion), another crucial metric for most AdWords advertisers, especially those primarily focused on e-commerce, lead generation or direct response marketing.

We recently compiled data from hundreds of WordStream clients – totaling several million in annualized spend – and plotted the average CPAs against impression-weighted Quality Scores. What did this tell us?

Higher quality scores resulted in lower CPAs.

Most businesses have an average Quality Score of 5 on the scale of 1-10. For every point higher than the average of 5, advertisers’ CPA decreased by an average of 16%. Conversely, for every point your Quality Score falls below 5, your average CPA will increase by a similar percentage. While conversion rates remained pretty steady regardless of Quality Score, higher scores resulted in dramatically lower CPCs that caused the lower CPAs.

Some people argue that lower CPC isn’t the same as lower CPA. A few even go as far to claim that you should forget about CPC, and that CPA is all that matters. However, our research shows that the two metrics are closely aligned.

Although CPC and CPA are related, the distinction between them is crucial – optimizing for CPA and optimizing for quality score is essentially the same practice. Having a lower quality score will increase your average CPA (compared to your competitors), which will harm your overall ROI.

Can you see a pattern emerging here?

4. More Profitable Campaigns

If an AdWords campaign is resulting in profitable conversions resulting from low-quality keywords, what would happen if those keywords had higher quality scores? You guessed it – the campaign would be even moreprofitable, and I’d love to meet the business owner who isn’t interested in making more money by spending less.

Some advertisers argue that there are certain instances when it’s impossible to improve quality scores, especially those operating in highly specialized niches. However, this simply isn’t true, and no search engine marketer worth their salt would make this kind of generalization.

After researching thousands of AdWords accounts across 250 industries, we found distribution of both high and low quality scores across the board, meaning that it is possible to achieve high quality scores even in highly niche areas. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying it’s impossible to improve quality scores for competitive search terms isn’t just wrong – it’s lazy.

Dent raised some good points in his article – namely the necessity of crafting compelling ads. Why is this so important? Because click-through rate, another vitally important AdWords metric, is largely determined by the quality of your ads themselves and the commercial intent of the keywords you pick.

However, our research shows that your quality score is impacted primarily by the CTR of your keywords/ads relative to the expected CTR for your current ad position – meaning the better your ads, the better your CTR, the better your quality score. See how that works?

AdWords advertisers should assume that the quality score of their ads can always be improved. Unless you’re one of the (very) select few with a quality score of 10, this advice is right on the money. Even if your quality scores are above average, you can still do better. As the examples above clearly demonstrate, quality score most definitely does matter.

New Backlink Analysis Tool Available From WebMeUp Completely For Free

As essential as good inbound links are to a successful SEO strategy, there are surprisingly few tools available for analyzing a site’s backlink profile. Even more uncommon are inbound link analysis tools that offer the full extent of their features completely for free. So when WebMeUp contacted me about their new, free tool I immediately saw the value in sharing it with SEJ readers.

WebMeUp’s new backlink analysis tool, available here, will remain 100% free while in beta. A stable version will be released soon, at which point they may charge for it, but at this time they’re only “considering” that option. It could very well remain free for the foreseeable future. I also must point out that there’s  a difference between WebMeUp’s all-in one SEO software and their new backlink tool. While the former is paid and works as a full-cycle SEO application, the latter targets link research specifically.

Alexandra Shkalikova, VP of Marketing at WebMeUp, was kind enough to provide some exclusive statements for SEJ about who the tool was designed for.

Who is this tool best suited for?

When we were designing the system’s architecture, we made a difficult decision: we should first deliver links to those who really need them – i.e. growing sites, those who do daily hard work for every link and every 1,000 visitors. We had to decide whether we want to look good in reviews, or would we rather be seen as useful to a broader audience of SEOs. You know, the SEOs who do the real life, hard jobs of analyzing link profiles of their growing sites and competitors’ sites.

So when choosing between “good-looking” or “good-doing” we chose good doing and decided to save more links for “smaller” sites at the expense of bigger ones. Today we can deliver up to 6,000,000 links per site, so “smaller” is a vague description.

We also decided to target domain diversity over link quantity. If you take any 50,000 links from WebMeUp and 50,000 links from another link tool, most likely you’ll have more domains in WebMeUp’s chunk. So I’d like to say this link index is particularly useful for SEOs and owners of those sites that really  depend on links, and to those people to whom SEO is critical for growing their business. This is how we differ from other backlink checkers, and this is what we’re proud of.

The Hazards Of Love: Keeping Mindful Within Long-Term Engagement

No matter your side of the business, you’ve been conditioned like the rest of us to strive for long-term engagement. If you’re an agency, you’re bred to eschew the one-off project or single campaign and pitch for Agency of Record status, or at least a retainer-based arrangement.

If you’re on the sell side, you know how to skillfully sweep aside the pilot or the test proposition and angle for the longer-term contact. Tests are for wimps. We need skin in the game to understand our own capacity for success.

There’s a lot to be said for having the time and space to conceive, execute and deliver on the promise of the engagement — and then to deepen the work over time through learning. Plus, having something that looks like long-term, lasting love from the outside staves off the competition… right?

The trouble with this notion is that our focus on long-term commitment from the outset is not always based on a long-term commitment to enriching the engagement between the people involved. In our data-driven realm, where we are chiefly focused on improving performance of marketing, media and creative assets, we forget to apply the same diligence to the human part of the engagement.

Before we can value this kind of commitment and insist it is key to our longer-term business prospects, don’t we need a plan for assuring the staying power of the team, the people managing the business? Yes. And, this comes down to a few things like scope of intelligence, strategic accountability and keeping a place for play.

Scope Of Intelligence

Does your team think wide and big enough? If you are a marketer, does your agency have the right scope of knowledge? This extends to platforms, enabling technology and data analytics — all things you will need to know your way around to execute data-driven marketing across channels with full efficiency.

If you are an agency, is the potential brand client receptive and open to new ideas, exploration and risk taking? If you are on the supply side, this all applies — you want agencies and brands that get it, are open and will lean in and try things, taking equal parts short and long view. Both are essential.

Today, with such an intricate space and an ever-evolving tech underbelly, a certain level of intellectual flex bodes well for the future. We cannot afford to be incurious — that leads to a certain blindness or robotic way of operating that does not allow for evolution.

Strategic Accountability

Early on, we win new business based on a few things: our reputation, a relevant body of work, the promise/indication of results and, importantly, connecting on strategic ideas. We resonate with each other based on how we see the path forward playing out. Either we are already on the same page strategically, or we respect the strategy the other has put forward and trust that our engagement can take us to where we want to be. But, so often, that falls apart as we get into the weeds, get tactical, get immersed in the day-to-day.

It’s important to check in occasionally on the strategic integrity of the engagement. How are we getting there? How accountable are our methods and tactics to the strategy we agreed upon? No matter where you sit, you’ll want a team that gets, lives and breathes your objectives. We should continue to look each other in the eyes strategically and check in on that Vulcan mind meld that led us down the path to falling in love in the first place.

Keeping A Place For Play

Lastly, yes, we are still going to strive for the longer term. It’s a calmer, healthier way to build a business. You can’t cobble and sustain a long-term play of thousands of small projects each and every year. But, there is a place for tests and pilots along the way.

Just as you might keep a relationship fresh by trying different things, it’s essential within your master plan to co-develop with your team various “excursions” — ventures into new territory on placements, platforms, creative, messaging or the science and tech behind it all. Trying new things cooperatively within an existing engagement provides vital spark.

In short, we do ourselves a disservice in our default preference of long-term engagement, without keeping vigilant on how we engage as people within it — our intelligence, our approaches, strategic ideas and spirit of collaboration to try new things. If we just love, love without digging in and getting real, the longer term is just as shallow and fleeting as the one night stand.

AdGooroo Adds Mobile Paid Search Spend Insights, Releases List Of Top Mobile Search Advertisers

Search marketing intelligence firm, AdGooroo announced it is the first to provide insights into search advertising spend on mobile devices. The new mobile search data is now included in the company’s SEM Insights Tool, starting with data from the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Additional mobile insights now available include ad copy, impressions and clicks, click-through rates, costs-per-click at the campaign and keyword level.

AdGooroo has also released a list of the top 20 advertisers in mobile search by impressions in January 2014. The list is based on impressions from the top 50,000 keywords on Google AdWords in the U.S.

Amazon dominates as the number one search advertiser on both mobile and desktop. Walmart ranks number 2 on desktop, but barely squeaks into the top 20 on mobile, while JC Penney ranks number five on desktop search and is at just 29 in the list of mobile search advertisers.

iTunes and ActiveBeat, a health content provider, garnered more mobile search impressions than desktop impressions in January. Pizza Hut, Wells Fargo and Chase’s rankings reflect their investment in location-based mobile ad campaigns — search for “pizza” on your smartphone, and you’ll likely see an ad for Pizza Hut.

Facebook: How to Schedule Facebook Posts

How to Schedule Facebook Posts
Facebook recently added the ability to schedule future (and past) posts for your Facebook Page so you can line up a bunch of great
content all at once. (Note: This is not yet available from mobile devices.) It’s easy, just follow a few simple steps.
1. Go to your Facebook Page
2. Type in your post as you normally would
3. Before you hit “Post,” click on the small clock at the bottom of the posting box
4. Add the year, month, day, hour, and minute you want to schedule your post for
5. Click Schedule
Checking Your Activity Log
To see all of your scheduled posts all you have to do is go to the “Activity Log” by clicking on the admin panel at the top right, then
“Manage” and then “Use Activity Log” and you will see all of your scheduled posts.

Facebook: You As Your Brand Page

Take your business on the road! The Facebook Brand Page allows you to interact with other users and other pages as your Brand Page
Alias.
(It just means that instead of your posts coming from “Alexandra Sinclair” they would come from “Sinclair’s Café”)
Step 1
Start by Clicking on Account and choosing Use Facebook as Page.
Step 2
To keep you from having an identity crisis, Facebook created a tour to get you started as your brand. We’ll go through the tour with you.
Click Start Tour.Step 3
It’s easy to stay on top of things. With the Facebook Brand Pages you get a notification when people interact with your page or posts.
Click Continue.
Step 4
What does your brand like? Find other Pages to like and comment on them as your Page.
Liking other business Pages is a great way to recognize partners, local businesses, nonprofits, and more. You control which businesses
you have liked show up in the “Likes” box on your Page.
“Featured Likes”, found in the “Featured” tab in the “Edit Page” view, allows you to rotate the chosen pages on the left-hand side of your
page.
Click Continue.
Step 5
Keep up with other Pages you’ve liked through a newsfeed just for your Page.
This will help separate the noise from your Profile and Brand Pages.
Click Continue.Step 6
If you want to go back to using Facebook as you, instead of your company, it’s easy to switch back at any time.
Just Click on Account and select your name.
Click Finish Tour.
Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc

Facebook: Post Your First Update

Step 1

It’s time to have your business say something to the world.
Click inside the Status box. (Located on the left just below the about section of your Facebook Page.)
Enter your first status update message. Got writer’s block? See our What Should You Say? section for ideas.

Click Post. It’s that simple!

Don’t forget a picture! If you add an image to your post more people will read your post and click on your link.
Your First Post: Complete!
Now your fans can like, post comments to your update, or share it with their friends.Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc

Facebook: What Should You Say?

What to Post?

Now that you’ve setup a Facebook Page you’re probably wondering what you should post. What you post really depends on a few
things: What type of business are you? What’s your personality? What are your goals?
How to Find Great Content
Even for professional writers, creating great content on a regular basis can be a real struggle. And while not every blog, Twitter, or
Facebook post needs to be mind-blowing or all-inclusive (break longer content into smaller chunks), you do want to deliver something of
value to your customers, members, investors, and prospects every time they see your organization’s name. So you do you make life
easy for yourself?
1. Don’t think too hard.
Obviously being thoughtful is really important and you want to show the world how smart you are. But you don’t actually need to
think too hard to provide people with something of value. Remember: no one knows your business better than you do, and
people are probably coming to your Page because they already see you as an authority. Proactively providing answers to
questions they might have, summarizing industry articles or books you have read, and sharing insightful videos with some key
takeaways can all get you moving in the right direction.
2. Capture your own conversations.
Creating content is about telling stories, and you have stories in your life every day. One of the best sources of social content is
to play back interesting conversations that you’re having with your friends or family or customers relating to your business. Share
a customers’ success story or how they might be doing something different, relay a discussion about a product that you recently
had, or highlight key takeaways from an event you attended. Your life is full of great stories that your readers could find
interesting.
3. Know your audience. Every organization is different and every audience has its own set of needs and goals and preferences.
Whether formally (a survey) or informally (casual conversations) you need to find out what people are looking for from you via
your social networks. Are they looking for coupons? For inside information? Advice? Short tips? Long articles? All of those
insights can help narrow down the number of options you might have and tell your stories in the most appropriate way.
One-Size-Fits-All Posting Guidelines
How Often Should You Post?
The key is consistency. If you post every hour, every day for a month, and then go radio silent for a week, that will throw your fans off.
Find a frequency that works for your schedule, and your audience, and stick to it. It can be as simple as once a day or every other day.
Should You Take Down Comments or Posts?
First, consider creating company or organization guidelines for appropriate Facebook content. It’s important to show your fans that
you’re a transparent, authentic organization, so resist the urge to delete a negative comment, unless it’s in clear violation of your
policy. Instead, use a negative comment as an opportunity to showcase your customer service and empathy, and as a learning
opportunity for what you can improve.
How Much (Or How Little) Should You Respond to Comments?
You want to give your fans some room to form your brand community with you. That means be responsive to their questions and post
content to spark interaction, but let fans talk to each other without you at the center. Finding this balance can be a challenge, but when
you do, it gives you a chance to listen, and your fans the chance to develop a deeper relationship with your brand.
According to research done by Vitrue, Facebook posts on Fridays generate the most engagement while posts on Saturdays and
Sundays get the lowest engagement.
Facebook is About Individual People Connecting
We know this is probably obvious, but we’ll say it anyway: Facebook is about individual people connecting. So when you’re putting
content on your Facebook Page, think about what they’ll like as people, not just as potential customers.
The great thing about Facebook is that it lets you humanize your brand, so people really get to build a relationship with it. This means
you can be a little more conversational with your customers, but you should still be sure you’re posting things that fit with what your
brand’s all about.
Don’t forget that your brand stands for something, and what works for you might not work for other businesses. For example, a
toothpaste brand could post about hygiene and funky tooth facts, but a laundry detergent brand might post about stain removal, or
maybe even fashion.
Be Smart and Friendly
The things you do to increase brand awareness, find prospects, and generate sales on Facebook are core to any small organization.
Now they are just happening online.
Be smart. The best way to get noticed and to develop a following is to become an industry resource. How do you let people
know you’re smart? Post links to blog posts about your industry, or even highlight the good work of your competitors when it
makes sense.
Find a niche for your expertise. Chances are that your business or cause is not for everyone, so build a brand around what
you do best and share it with those who are most likely to care.
Be friendly. Share company traditions. Showing that you’re human will help you stand out in the crowd.
Be on your customers’ minds. Remind your fans about your great deals, events, and news and stay at the top of their
newsfeed. This helps you become a part of their day-to-day lives.
Let your customers know they’re on your mind. Wish them Happy Birthday, highlight one of their achievements, or share a
photo of them from a past event.
Nonprofit Content: Spread Your Mission
Facebook is a great place for nonprofits to connect supporters with their mission. Here’s what you should keep in mind when
promoting your nonprofit on Facebook:
People on Facebook love to talk about issues they care about, and this is good news for nonprofits. Share photos of the rainforest you
preserved, the people you fed, or the puppies you saved. The best part of a nonprofit Facebook Page is that people really like to “like”
you and share their causes with friends.
Don’t expect Facebook to drive direct donations—but do use it to help people get to know your mission and the great things you do.
That way, when you run your donor campaigns, they already know you and they’ll want to support you.
Nonprofit Content: Get Your Supporters Involved
As a nonprofit some of your main goals are probably to raise awareness, inspire action, and collect donations. Luckily, Facebook
has a way to help you reach each of these goals.
1. Add the Causes App to take donations and raise awareness. Visit http://www.facebook.com/causes to install the app!
2. Just like B2C, get close to your supporters. Wish them Happy Birthday, highlight one of their achievements, or show photos of
them getting involved.
Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc

Facebook: Facebook Page Settings and Privacy

Step 1
Customize your settings and privacy so people see what you want. From your Facebook Page click on Manage Permissions from the
Edit Page menu.
How Private Should You Be?
We say keep your Page public and allow people to comment. Why? Customers like being able to interact with you on Facebook, so it’s
no surprise that the most transparent pages are the most successful.
Don’t forget, you manage the Page. If a comment comes in that turns out to be spam, you can always delete it.
Step 2
You’ll land on the Manage Permissions section.
This is where you can start to customize: choose who can see this Page, decide what to display on your Timeline, who can post to your
Timeline, and what kind of stuff people are allowed to post.
When you’re happy with your settings click Save Changes.
Step 3
One final thing you can do on the privacy front is assign, or remove, other people as Admins for your Page. You can do this at any time.
To add a new Page Administrator, Click On Admin Roles and update your settings.
Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc

Facebook: Managing Timeline Tabs and Applications

Positioning Tabs at the top of the new Timeline view
One of the big changes to Pages is the Tabs representing your Facebook apps, that used to be small icons along the left side of the
Page, are now bigger and right under your cover photo.
You can set which three Tabs after the photos you always want visible.
Here’s how to change which Tabs show up at the top:
1. Log into your Facebook account and go to your Page
2. Go to the top section of your Timeline, where the various Tabs of your Page display.
3. To the right of the last Tab in that list, you’ll see a down arrow. Click that arrow to expand the section and view the other Tabs on
your Page.
4. Hover your cursor over the right corner of the block you want to feature. A pencil edit icon will appear.
5. Click the pencil icon. A dropdown menu displays saying, “Swap position with…”. Beneath that is the list of the various Tabs in
your Facebook Page. Select the Tab that appears in the position where you want to put your chosen Tab and the two blocks
switch positions.
How to change the display name and image of Tabs and Applications
To help encourage your Page visitors to check out your active social campaigns or other special content, you can update both the name
and image of your Tabs.
It’s easy to do.
1. Navigate to the Tabs sections of your Page as listed above.
2. To the right of the last Tab, you’ll see a down arrow. Click that arrow to expand the section and view the other Tabs on your
Page.
3. Hover your cursor over the right corner of the block you want to edit. A pencil edit icon will appear.
4. Click the pencil icon. A dropdown menu displays, select “edit settings.”
5. On the overlay that displays, you can enter a new name for your Tab. For example, Just for Fans.
6. Next customize the image by clicking on “Change” beside Custom Tab Image.
7. On the Upload a custom image page that displays, click “Change”. The Upload a Page Tab overlay displays.
8. Click “Choose File” to browse to the image that you wish to use from your computer. You’ll want something that represents your
offer or content. Once the image loads into the screen, close the browser window. You will return to the browser window with the
Tab name overlay.
9. Click Okay on the overlay to see the way your renamed Tab looks.
You’re done!