How to Improve Quality Score on Google Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide for Marketers

TL;DR: Quality Score is Google's 1–10 rating of how relevant your keywords, ads, and landing pages are to a searcher. A higher score means lower CPCs and better ad positions. To improve it, you need to tighten keyword-to-ad relevance, boost expected CTR, and fix your landing page experience—in that order. This guide walks you through exactly how to do each one.

If you've ever asked yourself "how do I improve Quality Score on Google Ads?", you're in good company. It's one of the most common questions among PPC managers, and for good reason. Quality Score directly affects how much you pay per click and where your ads show up. A low score means you're paying a premium for worse placement. A high score means you can outrank competitors while spending less.

The tricky part? Quality Score isn't a single lever you pull. It's a composite metric made up of three components: Expected Click-Through Rate, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. Each one needs its own fix, and they don't all respond to the same tactics.

In most accounts I audit, the problem isn't that advertisers don't know Quality Score exists—it's that they treat it as a single number rather than a breakdown of three distinct signals. That's where the confusion starts. This guide breaks the improvement process into clear, sequential steps so you know exactly what to work on first, and how to verify it's actually working.

Step 1: Diagnose Your Current Quality Score by Component

Before you touch anything, you need to know what's actually broken. Quality Score without component-level data is just a number. The real insight lives in the three sub-scores.

Here's how to pull the data. Go to your Keywords tab in Google Ads, click the Columns icon, and add the following metrics: Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. You can also add the historical versions of these columns (Quality Score (hist.), etc.) to track changes over time.

Each sub-component is rated one of three ways: Below Average, Average, or Above Average. That's your diagnostic framework. A keyword rated "Below Average" on Ad Relevance tells you something completely different than one rated "Below Average" on Landing Page Experience—and the fix is different too.

Once your columns are set up, sort by each component to surface the worst performers. Start with keywords that are:

High spend + Below Average on any component: These are actively costing you money right now. They're your top priority.

High impressions + Below Average Expected CTR: Lots of exposure, poor engagement. This is dragging your account-level quality signals down.

Below Average on all three components: These keywords may need to be paused entirely if they can't be rehabilitated quickly.

What usually happens here is that advertisers find a handful of keywords responsible for a disproportionate share of wasted spend. Fix those first. Don't spread your effort across 200 keywords when 10 are causing 80% of the damage.

If you're managing multiple campaigns or client accounts, jumping between tabs to pull this data gets tedious fast. Tools like Keywordme are built to surface problem keywords directly inside Google Ads without the copy-paste-spreadsheet cycle, which makes this diagnostic step significantly faster at scale.

Step 2: Fix Ad Relevance by Tightening Your Ad Groups

Ad Relevance is Google's measure of how closely your ad copy matches the intent behind the keyword being searched. This is where most accounts fall down—not because advertisers write bad ads, but because they group too many keywords into a single ad group and use generic copy that doesn't speak to any of them precisely.

Think of it this way: if your ad group contains "running shoes," "best trail runners," and "lightweight marathon shoes," your ad copy has to serve three different intents at once. It ends up being vague enough to apply to all of them, which means it's perfectly relevant to none of them.

The fix is to break bloated ad groups into tightly themed clusters. Each ad group should contain keywords that share the same core intent and point to the same landing page. Some accounts benefit from Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs), though in practice, small intent-matched clusters of two to five closely related keywords often strike the right balance between relevance and manageability.

Once your ad groups are tighter, rewrite your headlines to include the exact keyword phrase or a close variant. Google rewards literal relevance here. If someone searches "waterproof trail running shoes" and your Headline 1 says "Waterproof Trail Running Shoes," that's a direct signal match. Generic headlines like "Shop Our Collection" don't move the needle on Ad Relevance.

For Responsive Search Ads, use pinning strategically. Pin your primary keyword phrase to Headline 1. This guarantees that the most relevant headline always appears in the most prominent position, regardless of how Google assembles the ad. It slightly limits Google's optimization flexibility, but the trade-off is worth it when Ad Relevance is your specific problem.

After making these changes, give it two to four weeks of impressions before evaluating the impact. Ad Relevance scores don't update instantly—they need data to recalibrate. Check back after that window and compare your component scores to where they started.

Step 3: Boost Expected CTR with Stronger Ad Copy and Match Types

Expected CTR is Google's prediction of how often your ad will be clicked relative to how often it's shown, benchmarked against other ads competing for the same keyword. It's based on historical performance, so it reflects patterns over time—not just your last campaign change.

The most direct way to improve Expected CTR is to write ad copy that speaks directly to what the searcher actually wants. Use action verbs. Address the problem they're trying to solve. Put a clear, specific benefit in the description. "Free Shipping on Orders Over $50" is more compelling than "Shop Now." "Fix Slow Google Ads Performance Today" beats "Google Ads Help."

Ad extensions are underused here. Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets expand your ad's real estate on the page and give searchers more reasons to click before they even reach your headline. In competitive auctions, a well-extended ad can visually dominate the results page in a way that drives clicks even when your position is similar to competitors.

Here's something that catches a lot of advertisers off guard: match type has a direct effect on Expected CTR. Broad match keywords trigger your ads for searches that may have nothing to do with your offer. Even if your ad copy is excellent, irrelevant impressions tank your CTR ratio. Google sees thousands of impressions with low engagement and interprets that as a signal that your ad isn't relevant to those searches.

The fix is to tighten match types. Move keywords from broad to phrase or exact where CTR is consistently low. This reduces impression volume, but the impressions you keep are far more likely to result in clicks—which is exactly what Expected CTR rewards. Understanding how phrase match and exact match differ is essential before making these changes.

Also, don't ignore the keywords that are quietly dragging you down. If a keyword has high impressions and very low CTR over an extended period, it's hurting your account-level quality signals. Pause it. The mistake most agencies make is keeping everything active because "more data is better." Sometimes the better move is to cut what's not working and let your healthy keywords carry more weight.

Step 4: Eliminate Junk Search Terms That Dilute Relevance

This step is closely related to Step 3, but it deserves its own focus because it's one of the fastest wins available in PPC optimization—and it's chronically underworked.

Irrelevant search terms don't just waste budget. They generate impressions with low engagement, which feeds directly into poor Expected CTR signals. Every time your ad shows for a search that has nothing to do with your offer and the user doesn't click, that's a data point Google uses to calibrate how relevant your ad is to that type of search.

Open your Search Terms Report and filter aggressively. Look for:

Zero conversions over a meaningful time window: If a term has spent real budget and converted nothing, it's a candidate for exclusion.

Low CTR terms with high impressions: These are actively suppressing your Expected CTR score.

Clearly off-topic queries: If you're advertising B2B accounting software and you're showing up for "free accounting homework help," that's a negative keyword waiting to be added.

Add irrelevant terms as negative keywords at the appropriate level. Campaign-level negatives work for broad exclusions that apply everywhere. Ad group-level negatives give you more surgical control when a term is irrelevant for one ad group but potentially valid for another.

This is exactly where Keywordme earns its keep. Instead of exporting search terms to a spreadsheet, cross-referencing against your existing negatives, and uploading a bulk file, you can review terms and add negatives with one click directly inside Google Ads. For accounts with high search term volume, that workflow difference is significant.

Aim to review your Search Terms Report at least weekly, especially for broad match and phrase match campaigns. The longer you let junk terms accumulate impressions, the more they drag on your quality signals. Weekly hygiene is not optional—it's table stakes for maintaining Quality Score over time.

Step 5: Improve Landing Page Experience for the Keywords That Matter

Landing Page Experience is the component most advertisers are slowest to fix because it requires work outside of Google Ads itself. But it's one-third of your Quality Score, so ignoring it puts a hard ceiling on how high your score can go.

Google evaluates Landing Page Experience based on several factors: how relevant the page content is to the keyword and ad, how transparent the page is about what the business does, ease of navigation, and mobile usability. You don't get a detailed breakdown from Google, but you can infer a lot from your own audit.

Start with relevance. Your landing page copy should reflect the search term and ad headline. If someone clicks an ad for "enterprise project management software" and lands on a generic homepage that talks about "productivity solutions," that's a relevance mismatch. The fix is to create dedicated landing pages per ad group theme where possible. This isn't always feasible for every keyword, but it's worth prioritizing for your highest-spend ad groups.

Page speed is a real factor. Slow pages create bad user experiences, and Google's systems pick up on engagement signals like bounce rate and time on page. Test your landing pages with Google PageSpeed Insights and act on the recommendations. Compressing images, enabling browser caching, and reducing render-blocking scripts are common wins that don't require a full redesign.

Make the conversion action obvious. If a user has to scroll three screens to find the form or the "Buy Now" button, your bounce rate will reflect that frustration. The primary CTA should be above the fold, clearly labeled, and visually distinct from the rest of the page. Pairing strong landing page experience with a focus on improving your Google Ads conversion rate compounds the impact of every optimization you make.

One thing to avoid: keyword stuffing on landing pages. Forcing your keyword phrase into every paragraph doesn't improve relevance signals—it reads as spam and can actually work against you. Write naturally for the user, make sure the page clearly addresses what they searched for, and let relevance come from genuine content alignment rather than repetition.

Step 6: Monitor, Iterate, and Track Quality Score Over Time

Here's a reality check: Quality Score doesn't change overnight. After making improvements to ad copy, match types, negative keywords, or landing pages, expect two to four weeks before you see meaningful movement in the component scores. The metric is based on accumulated data, not a single session.

Use Google Ads' historical Quality Score columns to track progress. The columns labeled "Quality Score (hist.)," "Exp. CTR (hist.)," and similar variants let you compare scores at a specific point in time against where they are now. This is the only reliable way to measure whether your changes are actually working.

Set a recurring review cadence. Weekly or bi-weekly is the right frequency for most accounts. During each review, check:

Search Terms Report: New junk terms to add as negatives.

CTR trends by keyword: Are your tightened match types improving engagement ratios?

Ad copy performance: Which headlines and descriptions are getting the most impressions and clicks in your RSAs?

Track downstream metrics alongside Quality Score. If your improvements are working, you should see CPC decrease and impression share increase for the same budget over time. Those are the real-world outcomes that Quality Score improvements are supposed to deliver. Understanding realistic timelines for Google Ads optimization helps set the right expectations during this process.

Don't obsess over the number itself. A keyword moving from a 5 to a 6 might not feel exciting, but if the underlying behaviors are improving—CTR is up, irrelevant impressions are down, landing page bounce rate is lower—the economics of your campaigns are improving whether or not the score has fully caught up yet. Focus on the behaviors that drive the score, not the score as a target in itself.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Quality Score

What is a good Quality Score in Google Ads? Scores of 7–10 are generally considered healthy. Scores below 5 on high-spend keywords are worth addressing immediately. A score of 3 or below on a keyword you're actively bidding on is a signal that something is significantly misaligned between your keyword, ad, and landing page.

Does Quality Score affect all campaign types? Quality Score applies to Search campaigns. Performance Max campaigns use different relevance signals and don't surface Quality Score in the same way. If you're running PMax alongside Search, focus your Quality Score work on the Search campaigns where the metric is actually visible and actionable.

How quickly can I improve my Quality Score? Small improvements can appear within days of fixing Ad Relevance, particularly if your changes are significant and the keyword accumulates impressions quickly. Meaningful, sustained improvement typically takes two to four weeks of data accumulation. Don't make changes and check back the next morning—you won't see what you're looking for.

Can I improve Quality Score without changing my landing page? Yes, partially. Improving Ad Relevance and Expected CTR can move the score, and for some keywords those two components are the primary drag. But Landing Page Experience accounts for roughly one-third of the metric. Ignoring it limits how high your score can realistically go, especially if that component is currently rated Below Average.

Does pausing low-Quality Score keywords help? Yes, in two ways. First, it removes keywords that are actively dragging on your account's quality signals. Second, it forces your budget toward keywords that are performing better. Pausing isn't always the right call—sometimes the keyword is worth fixing—but for terms with persistently low scores and low commercial value, pausing is the cleanest solution.

Is Quality Score the same as Optimization Score? No, and this confusion comes up constantly. Quality Score is a keyword-level metric that reflects the relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Optimization Score is an account-level score based on Google's recommendations for improving campaign settings and structure. They measure completely different things. Improving one doesn't automatically improve the other.

Putting It All Together: Your Quality Score Improvement Checklist

Improving Quality Score is an ongoing practice, not a one-time project. The goal is to keep your keywords, ads, and landing pages tightly aligned as your campaigns evolve. Here's a quick checklist to run through:

✅ Pulled Quality Score data by component (Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience)

✅ Identified keywords with Below Average ratings on high-spend terms

✅ Tightened ad groups and rewrote ad copy to match keyword intent

✅ Reviewed and refined match types to reduce irrelevant impressions

✅ Audited the Search Terms Report and added relevant negative keywords

✅ Checked landing page relevance, speed, and conversion clarity

✅ Set a recurring review cadence to monitor changes over time

If this process feels manual and time-consuming, that's because it can be—especially when you're managing multiple campaigns or client accounts. The Search Terms Report alone can generate hundreds of rows per week in active accounts, and actioning them through the native Google Ads interface involves a lot of clicking, exporting, and re-importing.

Keywordme is built to speed up exactly this kind of work. It lets you remove junk search terms, build high-intent keyword lists, and apply match types instantly—right inside Google Ads, without spreadsheets or tab-switching. Whether you're a solo advertiser trying to stay on top of one account or an agency managing dozens, that kind of workflow efficiency compounds quickly.

Start your free 7-day trial (then just $12/month) and see how much faster your Quality Score optimization workflow can actually be.