Google Ads is one the most effective ways to drive leads and sales.
The purpose of Google is to provide the user with the most intuitive and relevant user experience possible. Trust is pivotal – and part of trusting the results provided is providing the most relevant search results & ads.
That’s why the structure of your Google Ads account matters.
It’s why five different clients targeting the same keywords in the same industry can receive five wildly different results. Why are some companies ads appearing more often, converting sales at a lower cost than others?
The Amire Marketing team has worked with Google Ads for over a decade, managing accounts in just about every single industry. During this time, we’ve have first-hand experience the best structure to drive granular, relevant account structures that drives better results. This is called the single keyword ad groups (SKAG) approach.
Before going into more detail on SKAG, first, it’s important to understand how Google Ads works.
How Do Google Ads Work?
Google Ads is simply an auction. Each advertiser selects their keywords and chooses a maximum bid they are happy to pay for a click for that specific term.
Google selects a winning bid and ranks the ads 1,2,3 at the top of the page.
So how is the auction winner determined? Is it the highest bid? Thankfully, no.
Google has a formula to ensure that it’s the RELEVANT ads that show up first, not the advertisers with the deepest pockets. Knowing this formula and making sure your account is structured to get the most out of it is the key to successfully advertising on Google Ads.
The formula is: Your Maximum Bid x Quality Score
Quality Score
We’ve covered the maximum bid for each keyword, but what is Quality Score?
Your Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including:
- Your click-through rate (CTR).
- The relevance of each keyword to its ad group.
- Landing page quality and relevance.
- The relevance of your ad text.
- Your historical Google Ads account performance.
Quality Score is a score out of 10, given by Google to attain your RELEVANCY for that term.
In a nutshell – Quality Score is simply the relationship between these three variables:
- 1. Your Keyword
- 2. Your Ads
- 3. The Landing Page
So, for example, if we’re selling Blue men’s running shoes, we can select the keyword “Blue Running Shoes for Men”.
- Ideally, we should see an ad with the specific term in that headline – This will increase the percentage of users clicking your ads.
- Going to a landing page like with a selection of blue men’s running shoes.
In this case, the relationship between such a keyword and ad combination would be very high.
Below we can see the relationship between Maximum Bid and Quality Score and how it affects rank and position:
This table shows that:
Advertiser I is only willing to pay $2 per click and has the highest quality score of 10 in relation to the other advertisers.
Using the formula above: Maximum Bid ($2) x 10 (Quality Score) = Ad Rank of 20
Even though Advertiser IV has a max bid of $8 – it will still be outbid due to the higher AD rank of advertiser I. In this instance, the advertiser with the lowest bid wins the auction.
Google recognises when advertisers are not providing the most relevant, transparent experience and rewards the advertisers that do.
This is why some businesses win at Google Ads and others don’t.
The advertisers who know how to implement the best practice to maximise their Quality Score drive A LOT more business at a much lower cost!
We don’t want to oversimplify Google Ads. There are tonnes of ad formats, ways to test and solid theories behind the bidding – but the largest impact to scale performance is the basics – your campaign structure. Why? Because the account structure and landing page has the biggest impact on Quality Score.
Google Ads Account Structure and SKAG
Let’s have a look at what a traditional Google Ads account structure looks like compared to SKAG, which employs best practice.
Here we can see that the new SKAG has three ads for each keyword, as opposed to a set of ads for multiple keywords like the below:
Each of these keywords – should have it own unique ad speaking directly to it.
Imagine seeing the same ad for blue, red, women’s or men’s running shoes! Is it relevant? Yes, kind of – but certainly not as relevant as ads that are tailored to every single keyword that take them to the perfect landing pages.
On top of this, AdEspresso actually studied 104,256 ads and found that when ad relevance increased and CTR increased, there was a huge drop in cost per click. This is exactly what we have been experiencing with our clients.
Source:adEspresso, Relevance Score: Everything You Need to Know in 2019 (Strategies Included) May 13 2019 , https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-ads-relevance-score/
We have applied SKAG time and time again for our clients, with the same incredible results.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Landing page Experience is key – factoring over 1/3 of the impact of the quality score. So to have a website that ticks off the below factors are key:
- Fast loading time
- Nice design
- Relevant Content
- Get your main points across visually & fast – don’t rely on the user to scroll down very far on the page.
- Clear Call to actions: Enquiry forms, buttons to enquire, buy.
The benefits of this approach is clear – you will be the advertiser that outperforms your competitors, shows more often than not, spends less for each enquiry and generates more margin on sales. After 12 years of Digital advertising on Google ads, there are many factors that drive performance, but understanding and implementing this is the one that makes the largest impact.
There is nothing fancy. It may not sound as exciting as other Google Ads techniques out there, but it’s the foundation of a truly successful Google Ads strategy.
Subscribe to our blog
Amire covers all aspects of Paid Advertising, join our readers to get valuable industry insights, trends, tips and more.
