Ever wondered how Google determines how it shows your ads and where?
Two words: Ad Rank.
What is ad rank?
Ad Rank is one of the most important metrics in Google ads. It determines where your ad is shown.
The interesting thing about Ad Rank, is that it’s calculated every time your keyword is in an auction.
What counts as ad rank?
There are six factors that go into Ad Rank:
- Bids.
- Landing page quality.
- Ad rank thresholds.
- The competitiveness in an auction.
- The search context.
- Your ad assets.
These are all calculated in real time to determine whether your ad appears at the top of the first page of Google’s search results, or shows up at the bottom of the second page, for example. Obviously, the higher on the first page you are, the better.
What does Ad Rank affect?
A couple of things:
- The higher the Ad Rank, the more likely your ad is to be clicked and to generate a conversion.
- The higher the Ad Rank, and the higher your Quality Score, the cheaper your average cost-per-clicks will be.
With Ad Rank, there are three things that you, as an advertiser, have control over:
- Expected click-through rate.
- Ad relevance.
- Landing page experience.
We’ll get into each of these later in the article.
But, spoiler alert: These are the keyword Quality Score metrics on Google as well. So, Ad Rank is strongly determined by Quality Score.
You can see your current and historical Quality Score at the keyword level.
The higher the Ad Rank, the more likely it is to be clicked, the more likely it is to generate a conversion.
How to improve Ad Rank through Expected CTR?
As you know now, Quality Score has the biggest impact on Ad Rank.
So let’s dive into one of the three main metrics of Quality Score: Expected click-through rate (CTR).
So, what is expected CTR?
It’s a prediction made by Google about the likelihood that your ad will be clicked on.
How do you improve expected CTR?
There are three main ways:
- Refining your keywords. You want all your keywords to capture the searcher’s intent. Longer tail keywords are more specific, so focus on those too.
- Craft compelling copy. It’s easier said than done, but you need clickable ad copy. Don’t forget to add unique selling propositions in your headlines and call to actions in your description.
- Add as many extensions as possible. Now called “ad assets,” extensions take up real estate in the search result, increasing your chances of being clicked on. It also lets Google highlight and use the specific extensions that it thinks will be relevant to the searcher.
But the single most important thing to remember: Keep your negative keyword list robust.
Search for the search term report regularly to filter out any searches that aren’t relevant to your ad, because they may be hurting your Quality Score and rank.
How to improve Ad Rank with Ad Relevance?
The second Quality Score metric that we advertisers have control over, to help you increase your rank in the search results.
So, what is Ad Relevance?
Ad Relevance refers to how relevant your ad is to the searcher.
Because ultimately, you want your ad to be useful to the searcher’s intent.
Wait, how is it different from expected clickthrough rate (CTR)? While Ad Relevance has to do with matching the ad with the search intent, expected CTR is about how enticing the ad is to click on.
Here’s how you can improve Ad Relevance:
- Use message-matching. Add the keywords to at least one of your headlines, maybe in position one, to signal to Google that your ad is useful to the user.
- Create “single theme ad groups,” also known as STAGS. You want to group all your keywords into ad groups based on themes. That way, you can use your ad to encompass a theme, rather than trying to fit it to a campaign.
- Review your keywords. Regularly review your keywords so you always have the most relevant selection within your STAG. If a keyword isn’t performing well, remove it.
The Crew’s tip
Make sure to refine your negative keywords before you begin adding broad match keywords into your ad groups.
Because the more you stray away from the intent, the lower your Ad Relevance will be.
How to improve Ad Rank with Landing Page Experience?
Finally, we’re going to talk all about the landing page experience.
A big part of Google’s Quality Score—which helps determine the ad rank—is actually on your own website. It’s what Google calls the landing page experience.
What is the landing page experience?
It’s basically how useful, relevant, and easy to navigate your page is.
Things like the number of links and even the uniformity between the ad shown and the landing page can all affect it.
Here are three ways you can improve your landing page experience:
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). A lot of landing page builders have the option to add specific keywords to your landing page, based on the keyword that was clicked on Google.
- Uniform language. Online stores frequently want to target other regions in their native language, but send clicks to an English landing page rather than a page that is also in their language. Don’t make this mistake.
- Having problem or solution-oriented copy. If your keywords target a problem-stage audience, your landing page should spend time agitating the problem. If they target solution-stage audiences, then your landing page should focus on the solution. Straight forward, right?
The biggest takeaway?
Your page needs to be relevant to the user who clicks on your ad, period. And your ads should be relevant to the user who made the search.
One more thing to keep in mind: You can have the most relevant landing page, but if your page load time is slow, then your landing page experience could suffer.
Good luck!
