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Understand how Google uses keywords quality scores and learn how to stop your quality scores from holding your campaign performance!

Make Marketer’s ™Whitepaper (A Google Partner Agency)

“Very poor-quality scores can prevent an ad from being displayed for relevant search terms even when there is no competition for those keywords”.

Low quality scores can significantly impact Google Ads campaign performance. How? Quality scores determine how often the ads are shown, what ad position they are shown in and how much an advertiser pays per click.

Improving your AdWords quality scores by even a single point can bring down the cost per click (CPC) by over 16 percent. Equally important, higher quality scores will increase the number of impressions and visitors to your landing pages, e-commerce site.

Above all, it affects your business bottom line.

Here’s how quality scores work.

Each keyword in a campaign is assigned a quality score by Google which ranges from 1 -10. The quality score is Google’s assessment of how relevant your ad and landing page are to the users search term i.e. user’s intent. Their goal is to ensure that Google users have a positive experience and their experience is not compromised, and that the most relevant ads, with the right bids, get the best positions. Its all decided in an auction environment.

Understand the impact of quality scores on AdWords performance.

Quality scores can have a significant impact on the return on ad spend (ROAS) and effectiveness of Google Ads campaigns. Google uses this quality score as part of their calculation for Ad Rank, which is used in the auction to determine which ads are shown, in what position and at what price.

Auction: It’s a place where Google decides which ads are to be served and at what position. Ad Rank is calculated in the ad auction. Google runs ad auction every time someone enters a search term.

Once Google has ranked the advertisers ads in the ad auction, the quality score is used as part of the bid calculation. Lower quality scores will drive higher CPCs for the same ad position. Google has both a minimum quality threshold and a minimum bid threshold for ads.

Note: Google rewards advertisers with high quality scores by serving their ads at high positions and still charging them lower CPCs.

Note: Google also penalizes advertisers with low quality scores by serving their ads at lower positions and still charging them higher CPCs.

How Google calculates quality scores?

Google uses several factors to determine the quality score of a keyword. The quality score of a keyword can change over time as Google assesses the performance of a keyword time to time.

The calculation uses several factors, including, but not limited to:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR) – Are searchers finding the ad relevant?
2. Ad Copy Relevance– Is the ad copy relevant to the keyword and the landing page?
3. Landing Page – Is the landing page relevant to the keyword and ad? Does it load quickly? Is it easy to navigate?
4. Account History – Has the overall Google Ads account performed well over time?

To start off, Keyword is initially assigned a quality score based on the keyword history for other advertisers across all accounts, and your account, campaign and ad history. Looking at this initial quality score can help a Account Manager understand if other advertisers have had success with this keyword. Once the campaign is active, ad performance (e.g. click through rate) will become a primary driver of the score.

How are quality scores used?

Keyword quality scores are used to determine whether to show an ad, and to calculate both the Ad Rank and the Actual CPC. The keyword Ad Rank is calculated using the Max. CPC bid price multiplied by the quality score.

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score (Ad Extensions are also part of Ad Rank)

Your ad’s position in the auction is then determined by your Ad Rank relative to the competition for that same keyword.

Here’s an example:

Bidder A Max CPC = 2.00

Quality Score = 5

Bidder A – Ad Rank = 10

Bidder B Max CPC = 1.50

Quality Score = 8

Bidder B – Ad Rank = 12

Therefore, this particular keyword’s CPC will be determined by the Ad Rank of the bidder below you divided by your quality score plus 0.01. In the above example, Bidder B has the higher Ad Rank, and wins the auction.

Improving your quality score is just four steps away.

Though Google quality score information is available in the Google Ads account, on larger campaigns it can be time consuming and managers find it very difficult to find which quality scores have the highest impact on which campaigns. Remember, Quality scores are vital to the success of your campaigns.

What gets measured, gets managed!

Start here!

Improve the health of your quality scores with these four key components to Google Ads success:

1. Find those keywords from your campaigns that give you the quickest lift, now!

2. Find and improve weak ad copy. Improves quality and also influences the CTR.

3. Diagnose weak landing pages. Improves your Conversion Rate.

4. Track performance trends and adjust campaigns in real-time.

Use Google Analytics to optimize your campaigns. But before you get to this, you need to link Google Ads to Google Analytics.

Conclusion:

Digital Marketers are increasingly under more pressure to ensure the highest ROAS on digital advertising spend. Account Managers are inevitably tasked with endless experimentation for every feature in an attempt to ensure that campaigns are attracting the right audience at the right price and converting.

The four steps recommended here will allow you to dramatically improve the quality score of your keywords and ultimately increase your overall campaign ROI. If you still have questions or think Make Marketer Agency can help you improve your Google Ads performance.

In addition, digital marketing agencies often struggle to find good digital marketers who can handle the client ads account. They find digital marketers who can only create campaigns and have no idea about growth and ROAS. To help solve this problem Make Marketer started India’s First 100% Real-Time Digital Marketing Bootcamp where apprentices learn on live client campaigns breaking away from the institute type of training and going on to learn something that is in-depth and can implement advanced ad strategies from day 1.

Interested to know more about this Digital Marketing Immersive Bootcamp, Please visit our website: http://pages.measuremarketer.com

Default page in Google Analytics: Have you ever wondered how Google Analytics displays www.abc.com/  and www.abc.com/index.html? even though they both are same (take users to the same page), they show up as two separate entries in your reports. You can use this setting to configure Google Analytics to treat them as the same page by defining the Default page for your site:

If you find these pages reported differently in analytics, only then you will have to use this setting.

1. Navigate to the desired account, property, and view.
2. In the VIEW column, click View Settings.
3. In the Default page field, enter the default page for this domain. This is the page that loads when a user enters only the domain of your site into their address bar. For example, if www.example.com loads your index.html web page, enter index.html in this field.
4. Click Apply.

This also works at the subdirectory level. In other words, once you have entered index.html as the default page, Analytics also treats example.com/subdir/ and example.com/subdir/index.html as the same page.

Learn More advanced Google Analytics stuff from our Google Analytics Course Playlist on YouTube.

1. Google Analytics Course
2. eCommerce Analytics Training

Interested in learning skills that are better than someone with more than 10+ years of experience. Check our Digital Marketing Bootcamp.

Also check our Google Tag Manager Bootcamp:

Page Value is the average value that Google assigns for a page that a user visited before landing on the goal page or completing an e-commerce transaction (or both).

This page value is intended to give you an idea of which page in your site contributed more to your overall site’s revenue. If the page wasn’t involved (path the user took on your website) in an ecommerce transaction for your website in any way, then the Page Value for that particular page will be $0 since the page was never visited in a session where a transaction occurred.

Below is the equation that google shares and you can follow the same to calculate Page Value. Please note that the unique page view statistic represents the number of individual users who have loaded a given page per session. Each user is counted only once per session, no matter how many pages are opened by the same user.

Ecommerce Revenue + Total Goal Value
Number of Unique Pageviews for Given Page

The first example above illustrates how Page Value works. Let’s say you want to know the Page Value for Page B, and you know the following factors:

Goal page D: $20 (Remember, you assign the value of the Goal page when you first create a goal in the Analytics Settings page)
Receipt Page E: $200 (This page is where the user makes an ecommerce transaction of $100)
Unique pageview for Page B: One

You would then set up your Page Value equation like this:

Ecommerce Revenue ($200) + Total Goal Value ($20) 
Number of Unique Pageviews for Page B (1)

Page Value for Page B is $220 since a user visits Page B only once before the goal page during this session.

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Now let’s check how Page Value for Page B is affected when we combine the data from two different sessions. You can see that Page B is viewed only once during Session 1, but during Session 2 it gets two pageviews (we’re assuming the two pageviews are from the same user). The total Ecommerce revenue stays the same during both sessions. Although there were two unique pageviews, there was still only one Ecommerce transaction total for both sessions.

Goal page D: $20
Receipt Page E: $200
Unique pageview for Page B: Two

Your Page Value calculation should be adjusted to look like this:

Ecommerce Revenue ($200) + Total Goal Value ($20 x 2 sessions) 
Number of Unique Pageviews for Page B (2)

Page Value for Page B across two sessions is then $120, or $240 divided by two sessions.

Please know that, Not every FB ad Click is really a click to the website. FB counts Likes, Shares, Comments, Lead ad form visits as Link Clicks.

To troubleshoot this discrepancy, you have to add custom columns in the Facebook ads account.

1. Link Clicks: Not every link click is a click to the website. Since FB counts likes, shares and comments as link clicks. You will also find a column named unique link clicks.
2. Outbound Clicks: This column shows the clicks that took the user off of Facebook. The clicks that made users leave Facebook or its properties and visit the ads landing page. You will also find a column named unique outbound clicks.

Note: The outbound clicks does not necessarily mean the users visited the website so that Google Analytics can capture it. There may be some discrepancy here as well.

Say, the user clicks on the FB ad and get to landing page, but even before the landing page (where GA code is present)  loads he leaves the site, or your site is taking forever to load so analytics can capture the page view.

• Landing Page Views: This column shows the number of users that actually visited the site and the site was fully loaded and all the Tags were fired. (This is available only after you implement Facebook pixel on the site). You will also find a column named Unique Landing Page views.

So always check these 3 columns together when you are analyzing the performance of FB ads using Google Analytics data.

Since I am writing about this FB and GA discrepancy, it is important to know that FB takes 100% credit for conversion that happens on the website after an ad click within the default 28 day click attribution window.

So if a user likes the ad which is counted as a link click, then goes on to convert on the website within the next 28 days regardless of whichever marketing channel that brought the user to the user, Facebook will record it as a conversion and takes the credit for that conversion.

So if you have a multi-channel marketing, it is always recommend to decrease the default FB attribution window, so that FB does not take credit for a conversion that was heavily influenced and completed by other marketing channel.

Note: Facebook conversions data changes because of its default attribution model. If you check the conversion data on day 1, and then u check the conversion data for day 1 on day 20^th, you will notice the change in the conversion data, since FB will attribute all conversions that happen on the website after day 1 until day 27^th to the Day 1 Ad click.

Check our Free Facebook Ads Course on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL3HZ77ifvA&list=PLnn3CkoCETVC2Ef7rypyn3DUqRCaUsqfQ

Most of Facebook marketers cannot implement advanced marketing strategies and don’t use Facebook ads to their full potential. Want to learn the real Facebook marketing skills, check our Facebook Ads Bootcamp.

Learn Advanced Google Analytics in our Digital Marketing Bootcamp. Most of the experienced marketers really don’t understand the bounce rate and exit rate. They don’t know the basics of web analytics.

To become an effective marketer, measurement is the key. In fact measurement is the heart of all marketing strategies. Learn the most advanced measurement plans using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is now something that every digital marketer should know at a very deeper level. What GTM brings to marketing and measurement is uncomparable.

Multi Channel Funnel Reports in Google Analytics: How Google Ads campaigns affected the Organic Search Results for a healthcare client?

It is known to every digital marketer that Google ads work wonders for a business since it allows the business owners to connect to their prospects who are the bottom of their sales funnel. Since Google Ads has a default conversion window of 30 days (for click through conversions) that allows them to record conversions within 30 days after the ad click.

This means that users don’t have to click today and convert today. Even if the user converts within 30 days, it will still be counted as conversion by Google Ads. However, for Google Display campaigns, we have a default View Through Conversion window of 1 day, so if user is served an impression today and converts after 1 day, Google ads will not count it as a conversion.

Just to add, for Facebook ads their Click Through Conversion window is 28 day and View Through Conversion window is 1 day.

Let me come back to my question here, when I was working on Google Ads campaigns, I always wondered that people would click on my ads and not convert, later visit the website directly or through Google organic and convert and when this happens the Google Analytics does not attribute the conversion to Google Ads but Google Organic since GA works with Last Non Direct Click Attribution Model.

Let me explain this in detail, we had separate landing pages created for Google Ads Campaigns and we were driving users to those landing pages after they click on the ad where we have a lead capture form.

But you must know that conversions does not happen with just one touch point, the users might be exposed to other marketing channels and then convert. So the users who clicked the ad and visited the landing page and did not fill out the form, but later they go to the website through google organic listing and converts, then Google Analytics will attribute the conversion to Google Organic channel.

SO, I wanted to show my client on how my Google Ads campaigns are driving organic traffic to their website, so I had to get back to Google Analytics and create a new conversion segment to track the influence of my Google Ads campaigns on their organic results.

To do this, we go to the Conversions -> Multi Channel Funnels -> Top Conversions Path
Click on the conversion segment and then click on create a new conversion segment and apply filters in these order.

Any Interaction with medium is CPC and the Last Interaction is Organic.

When I do this I am filtering out conversions with conversion path includes an interaction from Google Ads, but the Last interaction is Google Organic.

When you check this report, you will find all the conversions and their paths where Google Organic was the last interaction, but Google Ads also played a role in that conversion path.

All those conversions you can attribute to Google Ads as Assisted Conversions.

This way, I showed my client that of course users have come through organic and converted but in all these conversions the users were also exposed to the Google Ads. Without Google Ads the users would not have come this far at all.

To understand this, you need to become affluent with Google Analytics Multi Channel Funnel reports and understand the concept of attribution and this affects the marketing campaigns.

Infact, most marketing’s fail because of inaccurate attribution. Either they dont know what is attibution or they know it all wrong. Our Agency, has our propriety solution to fix all your attribution issues.

Learn more about these in-depth Google Analytics concepts in Digital Marketing Bootcamp at Make Marketer.

Watch our Free Google Analytics Course on YouTube.

If you are managing ads for websites where the visitor comes to the site from one source and then moves to a different domain for purchase or checkout?

You want to track multiple domains in the same analytics property, how?

You want to track the users journey that involves multiple domains in the same GA property?

Answer: Implement Cross Domain Tracking for both the websites.

Remember, Google Analytics by default does not track two different domains in the same property, if you want to get this done you have to make changes to the regular Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Earlier, making changes to this GATC is an hard one, you had to go through Google Analytics Developers Environment to get this job done.

The steps that involved was to add few extra lines of code to the existing tracking code so the users information is passed from one domain to other domain using the client ID.

The user information is stored in Google Analytics Cookie i.e. _ga cookie, and the cookie is always stored on per domain basis, which means when a cookie is issued by domainA, then the website that issues the cookie will only be able to read the cookie and user information in the cookie. This is because of the browsers same origin policy.

So now when the user moves from one domainA to domainB, the cookie information is not passed to domainB, and the domainB treats it as a new users and attributes all of the hits to a new session.

So we have to find a way to transfer this user information in the cookie to the target domain. To do this we have to implement cross domain tracking for both websites.

The Objective of the Cross-Domain Tracking is

1. to attribute all the hits on different domains to the same session
2. link all the sessions to the same user.

When you implement cross domain tracking, the user information is passed with Client ID to the second domain, so the second domain may treat the user as a same user rather than calling it as a new user.

If you want to hard code the GATC, then here is what you need to add to the code so you can implement cross domain tracking.

Set the cookie domain to auto i.e. adding cookie domain to auto.

ga(‘create’, ‘UA-7865678-67’, ‘auto’)

Now you need to add a linker parameter and set it to true to tell GA about both the domains. You do this by adding this code to GATC i.e.

{‘allowlinker’: true}

So the new code will look like

ga(‘create’, ‘UA-7865678-67’, ‘auto’,{‘allowlinker’: true});

Once you are done with this, you need to setup the auto link Plugin, to do this

Ga(‘require’, ’linker’);

Then you need to invoke the autolink plugin, to do this

Ga(‘linker:autoLink’, [‘domainB.com’])

So now the whole code, will look like this:

ga(‘create’, ‘UA-7865678-67’, ‘auto’,{‘allowlinker’: true});

ga(‘require’, ’linker’);

ga(‘linker:autoLink’, [‘domainB.com’]);

Once you hard code these changes to the GATC, the GA will track the users moving across domainA and domainB as a single users and tie all the hits to the same session.

Note: The cross-domain tracking is simple and can be done in 3 easy steps with Google Tag Manager. They follow the same method and all of them are defined and there is no need to hard code the GATC.

Interested in Learning such advanced topics of digital marketing then consider checking our digital marketing training Bootcamp.

If you are using google analytics to track the users behavior on your site, you would notice that the content pagess report does not display the URL with hostname (does not show the entire URL of the page) rather it displays the page URL without the hostname.

I know, you might be wondering how this will affect your reporting. What if you have multiple subdomains  like (makemarketer.com and agency.makemarketer.com) and users are navigating across multiple subdomains within the same root domain then google analytics will not record this activity and you might get confused on which subdomain this content report about pages relates to.

Example:

User visits www.makemarketer.com and analytics reports as ‘/’

Now the user navigates to agency.makemarketer.com and even then it is reported as ‘/’

The question is how do I classify that ‘/’ reported by Google is for which URL i.e. makemarketer.com or agency.makemarketer.com, since users visiting both of them are reported as ‘/’.

This is a very big problem if you are working on websites that have multiple subdomains on the same root domain. All the more, bigger issues arise here, when user moves from root domain to subdomain then GA will record a new session and increment the new user count. This happenseven if you have the same Google Analytics Tracking Code on the subdomains.

Ideally, it has to be attributed to the same session and all the hits to the same user and not new user. For this to be answered, you have to understand to tracking between two subdomains. You can learn about all these advanced eCommerce concepts in our Digital Marketing Bootcamp. This is India’s First 100% Real-Time Digital Marketing Bootcamp.

To fix this issue, you have to set up a filter at the view level. But be extra careful when you are applying a filter since this will modify the data. It is always recommended to apply this filter when setting up the analytics account. Filters are not retoractive, they modify the data from the day it has been implemented. Removing the filters will not get the unfiltered data anymore.

1. To Apply this filter:
2. Go to Admin section
3. Select the view for which you want to apply the filter.
4. Navigate to the Filters tab.
5. Create a new filter
6. Select the filter type as custom
7. Select the advanced option
8. Give values in Field A, Field B and Output like in the image below

Save your filter and you are done.

Now Google Analytics will record the entire URL in the content report including the hostname.  It will now become very easy to understand the users navigation path to check how the users are moving across subdomains to understand the users flow.

Learn Advanced Google Analytics in our Digital Marketing Bootcamp. Most of the experienced marketers really don’t understand the bounce rate and exit rate. They don’t know the basics of web analytics.

To become an effective marketer, measurement is the key. In fact measurement is the heart of all marketing strategies. Learn the most advanced measurement plans using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is now something that every digital marketer should know at a very deeper level. What GTM brings to marketing and measurement is uncomparable.