Many AdWords users are killing their quality score and they don’t even know it. The quality score, among other things, is used by Google to determine ad placement and cost. There are quite a few advertisers who are absolutely killing their score and they don’t even realize it.

The formula that Google uses to determine quality score may take many factors into account but there are two things that will kill your score in a heartbeat. A lower quality score means that you are going to pay more for your AdWords placement.

1.) Landing Page

In the eyes of Google the landing page must be true to the letter of your ad. If you promise a free report or e-book, then your landing page must have an open link to the download. No squeezing allowed.

Honestly, Google and AdWords are not against the use of squeeze pages; however they are against advertising something for free and then requiring your visitor to exchange their name and email address for your product. As Google sees it, free means free, not in exchange for something.

The best way to get around this is to NEVER use the word “free” in you AdWords copy if there is not an open download link on the landing page. If you insist on doing this, Google will penalize you.

A few words of advice on landing pages.

Keep your landing page relevant to your AdWords copy. Google loves sites that have relevant, high quality copy. Sites that are not relevant to their ad copy are considered low quality and while Google will not ban them they will raise their costs so high that using AdWords is no longer economically feasible.

Avoid redirects on your landing page. The the use of sneaky redirects seems to be a part of the underside of the internet marketing business and is a “black hat” technique we all pay for. Google hates redirects used on landing pages and in the future these pages my not be indexed or may even be de-indexed.

Do not use hidden text or links. If Google observes your site to have hidden text or links and deems them deceptive in nature, you may find that your site has been removed from the Google Index.

2.) Floating Layer and Hover Ads

Google and AdWords hate these things. Simply put, these types of ads will destroy your quality score. Get them off your landing page as soon as possible. Replace these ads with a static opt-in form built into your landing page.

3.) Pop Up or Pop Under Ads

Google sees these types of ads as a hindrance to navigation on a site and will ban your landing page from AdWords if you use them. They will only re-activate your AdWords ads when you have removed any type of pop up or pop under ads.

If you are using any of the points outlined here on your site then you are only hurting yourself. Clean up your site and you will find that your ad position may climb while you costs may drop!

Frank Rumbauskas is a New York Times bestselling author and a Google-Certified AdWords Professional. He has created several highly successful businesses using AdWords alone. Click here to download 10 chapters of Frank’s powerful Google AdWords system.

Popularity: 3%

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!