On Google, the ads placed by sellers will also involve the issue of ad display ranking. The ad ranking is mainly determined by bidding and ad quality according to the internal algorithm. It can be seen that the promotion principle of Google search engine is very similar to the principle of CPC paid promotion on the Amazon platform, both involving factors such as bidding, keywords, and ad quality score. For bidding and keywords, sellers can set them according to their own needs. Here we focus on the ad quality score. The main factors affecting the ad quality score include the expected click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality. The specific introduction is as follows.
1. Expected click-through rate
The expected click-through rate refers to the click-through rate that may occur when a current ad appears in the current search results, calculated by the system based on the past click-through rate when the seller is bidding.
From the concept of expected click-through rate, it can be seen that in order to improve the performance of the expected click-through rate, what sellers can do is actually to improve the overall click-through rate of keywords and ads. In the case of a continuous increase in the past click-through rate values, the expected click-through rate will generally not be evaluated too badly.
However, sellers should note that the search engine system obviously looks at more indicators than sellers. For example, an advertisement is triggered by a buyer searching for a certain keyword through a certain device during a certain period of time. We can see that there are actually many uncertain factors, so even if the overall click-through rate in the past is very good, but the past data of the click-through rate in a certain situation is not ideal, the scheduled click-through rate may still be evaluated downward. However, sellers cannot control so many variables, so what they can do is actually to try to increase the click-through rate of the advertisement.
2. Relevance
Relevance mainly refers to the relevance between the search keywords and the advertisement. The relevance of Google promotion is actually to evaluate the relevance of the four places: the advertisement text, keywords, search terms, and landing pages. Therefore, the most ideal state is to maximize the relevance of the above four points, in other words, they are completely consistent.
For example, if a buyer searches for “children’s toys” and the seller uses the exact same keyword “children’s toys” when promoting on Google, and the seller’s ad copy also uses a slogan such as “children’s toys that develop infant intelligence”, and the seller’s landing page (that is, the listing page) also contains information about children’s toys, then the relevance score of this ad will be quite high.
In practice, this is not difficult. A very simple method is to look at the search term report, then find a word with a high conversion rate as a keyword, insert it into the ad copy, and finally modify the landing page according to the situation.
3. Landing page quality
The last factor in the ad quality score is the quality of the landing page. The quality of the landing page mainly depends on two points: one is the readability of the landing page; the other is the user experience of the landing page.
(1) Readability
The readability of the landing page refers to the fact that after the buyer enters the seller’s landing page through the search keyword, the buyer can simply and directly find the information he wants on the landing page. When setting up a landing page, sellers should avoid situations where the webpage is cluttered and the information is confusing.
(2) User experience
The user experience of a landing page is mainly reflected in the speed at which the webpage is loaded. Especially when buyers view webpages on mobile devices, sellers should avoid images that are too large to ensure that the webpage loads quickly.
By understanding the advertising principles and influencing factors of Google’s search engine, sellers will easily find that even if the keyword price is set high, if the quality of the ad does not meet certain standards, the ad will still not appear on the user’s search results. The benefit of this result is that it directly avoids vicious competition within the industry and the situation where monopoly companies use prices to suppress the advertising of small and medium-sized enterprises.