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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Quality Score = SEO. That's the oversimplified version of things being shared around by some marketing advice-givers of late.
Ask any key Googler on the paid or unpaid search side, and they'll readily admit something like "for both the organic search algorithm and the paid search ranking system, we look at very similar signals."
That's not the same as saying the AdWords program responds well to "SEO," however. Landing pages serve a very different function in paid search campaigns. You don't have to perfect them with SEO principles, and you'll very rarely get a major ranking boost from using SEO principles. You'll still predominantly rank well if you (1) have a high CTR; (2) bid sufficiently high; (3) create a strong relevancy pattern by associating the most relevant high-intent keywords with relevant ads and relevant landing pages.
Strictly dealing with the landing pages themselves, though, don't go overboard worrying about their impact on Quality Score. The wrong landing page can give you a poor Quality Score, for a variety of don't-be-evil reasons. Google does attempt to look at the page content, and will measure user responses such as bounce rates and back-button-hitting. But you don't have to twiddle around with keywords in headings and stuffing keywords in body text as if this were SEO circa 1997.
Powerful campaigns with real patterns of satisfied user behavior are "relevant enough," even with the basic elements of relevancy present on the page. Additional relevancy is likely not gained with keyword stuffing efforts. Outdated efforts to game QS with SEO principles only take away from real user response testing - pleasing navigation, persuasion, and testing that can improve conversion rates (without gimmicks and superstition).
The folks to say "AdWords = SEO"... they may be in the ballpark, and they haven't totally struck out, but the analogy is a foul tip into the bleachers, at best.Labels: google adwords, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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D'oh!
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