We are often asked about Google Adwords quality score for Call-Only campaigns. So, we wanted to provide some insights from what we’ve learned so far.
Landing Pages
You will need a landing page for your Call-Only Campaign. Despite the fact that no one should actually visit it (unless they manually enter the URL). This landing page should be owned by you, on your domain. DO NOT use someone else’s site or domain.
Google is not clear on how your landing page will affect your quality score with Call-Only campaigns, but it is a factor. We’ve seen pages with “Average” and “Above Average” scores. We assume we haven’t seen lower than that because our pages are decent, not great, but good enough.
Webinar Replay: 7 Ways to Split Test a Landing Page
Text Ads
Everyone will recommend that you use your keywords within your text ads, including us. It does help, but don’t forget that it has to make sense and there are likely much more compelling words that can be used within ad text that will get more clicks and a much higher click through rate.
Wherever possible, use your display URL to insert the keyword and use your description lines for compelling text and a call to action for your Call-Only Campaigns.
Bids
You want to bid aggressively, especially at the start of your call-only campaign. Plan to bid 50-60% of the payout to start. This will ensure you have a good chance of getting traffic, so you can learn what works and what doesn’t.
Be prepared to spend and lose money. But, what you’re doing is gaining data and insights so that you can optimize for a successful campaign.
Ad Rank
Your ad rank is your bid multiplied by your quality score and it will determine your ad position. The higher your quality score and your bid, the higher your ad position. With mobile traffic you want to be in either position 1 or 2.
Once you’ve figured out how much you can bid, you’ll need to work hard on improving your quality score, to maximize your ad rank. Sometimes this will work out and sometimes it won’t. But, without working hard to receive the best possible quality score, you can’t truly know if a call-only campaign could succeed or fail.
Read More: How to Get the Most From Call-Only Campaigns in Google Adwords
CTR
Your click through rate is important. If you have a keyword, ad text, call-only campaign that has high CTR Google will give you preference over other ads. A marketer that bids $1 and gets clicked 30% of the time is more valuable to Google than a marketer that bids $10 and gets clicked 1% of the time.
Focus on improving your CTR and Google will reward you with lower CPC’s and hopefully a more profitable campaign.
Ad Groups
Organize your ad groups by relevance. A general rule is to have 10 keywords or less within an ad group, but what’s really important is that the keywords within an ad group are all directly relevant to each other. So, if you find 20 keywords that are all closely relative to one another, you can put them in an ad group together.
Relevance is the key, not the number of keywords in an ad group.
Cheap Traffic
For the most part, cheap traffic is cheap for a reason. But, with Google you can find cheap traffic that is valuable. Many publishers get discouraged by Google because the CPC’s are “too high”, and sometimes they are. But, you’re in control of the CPC you pay. The keywords you choose and discover will determine how much you pay. So, look for niche keywords that are high volume and low completion. They’re not easy to find, but that’s your challenge and it will be the difference between a profitable campaign and a non-profitable campaign.
Also, you can get cheaper traffic with a high CTR and high quality score campaign. It’s within your control to create, grow and foster a high CTR and high quality score campaign.
Read More:4 Reasons You Need Google Call-Only Ads in Your Pay Per Call Campaign