How to Increase Your Keyword Quality Score in Google Ads

Quality Score directly impacts your Google Ads performance and costs. When you improve your Quality Score, you’ll see better ad positions at lower costs – a win-win that every business owner wants. This metric influences where your ads appear and how much you pay for each click, making it one of the most powerful levers in your PPC campaigns.

We’ll show you exactly how to boost your Quality Score through proven tactics that reduce your cost-per-click while improving your ad rankings. These strategies work because they align with Google’s goal of delivering relevant, useful experiences to searchers.

What Quality Score Actually Means for Your Campaigns

Quality Score is Google’s 1-10 rating system that predicts how relevant and useful your ad will be to someone searching for your keywords. Think of it as Google’s automated opinion on whether your keyword, ad, and landing page combination will satisfy a searcher’s intent.

Here’s what makes Quality Score so powerful: it accounts for a significant portion of your ad rank calculation. Higher Quality Scores mean better ad positions without increasing your bids. We’ve seen campaigns improve their position from page two to the top three results simply by optimising their Quality Score components.

Your visible Quality Score in Google Ads reflects three main components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. However, Google uses a more complex, real-time version during actual auctions that considers additional factors like location, device, and search context.

The Three Pillars of Quality Score Optimisation

Expected Click-Through Rate

Google predicts how likely people are to click your ad based on historical performance of your keywords and similar ads. If your expected CTR is “below average,” your ads aren’t compelling enough for your target keywords.

Improve your expected CTR by writing ad copy that directly addresses search intent. Include your target keyword in your headline and use action-oriented language that encourages clicks. Strong ad copy makes a measurable difference in performance.

Ad Relevance

This measures how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search query. Many advertisers think including exact match keywords in their ad copy guarantees good relevance – that’s not always true.

Google also evaluates supporting keywords and overall message alignment. If you’re advertising “tennis shoes” but your ad copy focuses on “athletic footwear” and “sports gear,” Google might flag poor relevance despite technically correct targeting.

Landing Page Experience

Your landing page must deliver what your ad promises. Google evaluates page loading speed, mobile-friendliness, content relevance, and ease of navigation. A slow-loading page with poor mobile experience will drag down your Quality Score regardless of how well your keywords and ads perform.

Keyword Match Types and Quality Score Impact

Different keyword match types affect your Quality Score in distinct ways. Exact match keywords typically achieve higher Quality Scores because they align perfectly with search queries, creating highly relevant experiences.

Start with phrase match and broad match modifier keywords to discover high-performing search terms, then extract the winners into separate exact match ad groups. For example, if your phrase match keyword “tennis shoes” triggers searches for “red tennis shoes” that convert well, create a dedicated exact match campaign for that specific term.

This approach lets you bid more aggressively on proven exact match keywords while maintaining broader discovery through other match types. Higher conversion rates from exact match keywords often correlate with improved Quality Scores because Google rewards relevance and user satisfaction.

Account Structure That Boosts Quality Score

Tight account organisation directly improves Quality Score. Create ad groups around closely related keywords rather than cramming diverse terms into single groups. Each ad group should focus on one core theme with variations of the same basic keyword.

Poor example: An ad group containing “tennis shoes,” “basketball equipment,” and “soccer cleats.”
Better approach: Separate ad groups for tennis shoes, basketball equipment, and soccer cleats, each with their own targeted ads and landing pages.

This structure allows you to write highly specific ad copy for each theme and send traffic to relevant landing pages. Google rewards this relevance with higher Quality Scores, which translates to lower costs and better positions.

Quality Score Audit and Improvement Process

Don’t chase perfect 10/10 Quality Scores across all keywords. Quality Score is an optimisation tool, not a KPI to report on. Focus your efforts where improvements will generate the biggest impact on campaign performance.

Review your existing Quality Scores and identify keywords with scores of 6 or below that drive significant traffic or conversions. These represent your biggest opportunities for cost reduction and performance improvement.

Follow this systematic approach for underperforming keywords:

1. Check landing page relevance and loading speed
2. Evaluate keyword grouping and ad group themes
3. Rewrite ad copy to better match search intent
4. Consider splitting broad ad groups into focused themes
5. Test new landing pages that directly address keyword intent

Make one change at a time and measure results over 2-4 weeks before implementing additional modifications. This approach helps you identify which optimisations drive the biggest improvements.

Advanced Quality Score Strategies

Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs)

For your highest-value keywords, consider creating single keyword ad groups. This ultra-focused approach allows perfect alignment between keyword, ad copy, and landing page, often resulting in Quality Scores of 8-10.

SKAGs work best for high-volume, high-value keywords where small improvements in Quality Score generate significant cost savings. The trade-off is increased management complexity, so reserve this strategy for keywords that justify the extra effort.

Historical Performance Impact

Quality Score considers historical account performance, which means new accounts might struggle initially while established accounts with good performance history get a boost. If you’re starting fresh, focus extra attention on the basics: relevant keywords, compelling ad copy, and fast-loading landing pages.

For established accounts with poor Quality Scores, sometimes the fastest improvement comes from pausing underperforming keywords and starting fresh with better-structured campaigns. Historical poor performance can weigh down your scores even after you fix underlying issues.

Measuring Quality Score Success

Track Quality Score improvements alongside business metrics that matter: cost-per-conversion, conversion rate, and return on ad spend. A Quality Score increase from 5 to 7 might reduce your cost-per-click by 20-30%, directly improving campaign profitability.

Monitor these key indicators of Quality Score improvement:

• Decreasing average cost-per-click for the same keywords
• Improved average ad position without bid increases
• Higher click-through rates on existing ads
• Increased impression share for target keywords

Remember that Quality Score optimisation is an ongoing process. Regular monitoring and adjustment ensure your campaigns maintain strong performance as markets and competition evolve.

Quality Score improvement requires systematic attention to relevance at every level of your campaigns. Focus on the fundamentals – relevant keywords, compelling ads, and great landing pages – and the scores will follow. The reward is lower costs and better performance that compounds over time.

Frequently Asked Questions