How to Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score: A Step-by-Step Guide

Quality Score is one of those metrics that quietly controls a lot in your Google Ads account. It influences how often your ads show, where they appear on the page, and how much you pay per click. A higher Quality Score can mean lower CPCs and better ad positions without increasing your budget. A lower one means you're paying more to compete and still losing ground to advertisers with tighter, more relevant campaigns.

The score runs from 1 to 10 and is calculated at the keyword level. Google evaluates three components: expected clickthrough rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. Each component gets a rating of "Below average," "Average," or "Above average." Understanding which component is dragging your score down is the starting point for fixing it.

Here's the thing most guides miss: improving Google Ads Quality Score isn't about applying a list of tips in random order. It's about diagnosing the specific problem first, then applying the right fix. A keyword with a "Below average" landing page experience needs a completely different intervention than one with a "Below average" expected CTR.

This guide walks you through exactly how to diagnose and improve each component, step by step. Whether you're managing a single campaign or dozens of client accounts, the same principles apply. You'll audit your current scores, tighten keyword-to-ad alignment, clean up search term traffic, sharpen your ad copy, and improve the landing page experience your visitors actually get.

By the end, you'll have a clear action plan for moving Quality Scores in the right direction, not just a collection of vague suggestions.

Step 1: Audit Your Current Quality Scores and Identify the Weak Spots

Before you change anything, you need to know exactly where the problems are. Quality Score data lives in your Keywords tab, but the relevant columns aren't visible by default. You'll need to add them manually.

In Google Ads, navigate to your Keywords tab and click the columns icon. Search for and add these four columns: Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. Save the view. Now you can see not just the overall score for each keyword, but which specific component is underperforming.

Once the columns are visible, sort by Quality Score in ascending order. Keywords scoring 6 or below are your priority targets. These are the ones where improvement will have the most meaningful impact on your cost per click and ad delivery.

For each low-scoring keyword, look at the three component ratings side by side. This is where the audit becomes actionable:

CTR problem: If Expected CTR is "Below average" but Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience are fine, your ad copy isn't compelling enough for that keyword, or the keyword is triggering searches where your ad isn't a strong match.

Relevance problem: If Ad Relevance is "Below average," your ad copy doesn't closely reflect the keyword's topic or intent. This often happens in broad ad groups where one ad tries to serve too many different keyword themes.

Landing page problem: If Landing Page Experience is "Below average," the page you're sending traffic to isn't delivering what the searcher expected based on their query and your ad.

Group your findings before you start making changes. Keywords that share the same root issue can often be fixed with the same action. For example, if five keywords in one ad group all have "Below average" Ad Relevance, that's a structural problem with the ad group, not five separate problems to solve individually.

A practical tip: don't try to fix every low-scoring keyword at once. Start with the keywords that have the highest spend and the lowest scores. These are the ones where improvement will have the biggest impact on what you're actually paying and how your budget is being used.

One important note on how Quality Score works: it's a diagnostic tool, not a real-time bidding input. Google uses a similar but distinct calculation as part of Ad Rank when determining your actual ad position and CPC at auction time. Improving your Quality Score components improves the underlying signals that feed into Ad Rank, but the two aren't the same number.

Step 2: Clean Up the Search Terms Feeding Your Keywords

One of the most underappreciated causes of poor Quality Scores is irrelevant search terms triggering your keywords. When your keyword matches queries that have nothing to do with your ad or landing page, Google reads that mismatch as a relevance signal, and not a good one.

Think about it from Google's perspective: if your keyword keeps showing up for searches that users don't click on, or click and immediately leave, that's evidence the keyword isn't serving users well. That suppresses your expected CTR and ad relevance ratings over time.

To fix this, open the Search Terms Report in Google Ads (found under Keywords, then Search Terms). Review the actual queries that triggered your ads. You're looking for three categories of problems:

Clearly off-topic terms: Queries that have nothing to do with what you're advertising. These should be added as negative keywords immediately.

Low-intent terms: Queries that are loosely related but unlikely to convert, such as informational searches when you're running a transactional campaign. These dilute your CTR signal and waste budget.

High-performing terms buried in broad keywords: Specific queries that are converting well and deserve their own dedicated keyword. Pulling these into tightly themed ad groups improves relevance and gives you more control over the ad copy that serves them.

Adding irrelevant terms as negative keywords stops the budget bleed and improves the quality of the signal Google uses to evaluate your keyword. If you want to go deeper on why this matters, it's worth understanding why negative keywords are important to your overall campaign health.

If you're managing multiple campaigns, manually working through the Search Terms Report can eat up a significant chunk of your optimization time. Keywordme is built for exactly this workflow. It lets you review and act on search terms directly inside Google Ads, adding negatives or promoting high-performing terms to keywords with a single click, without exporting to a spreadsheet or switching between tabs.

One pitfall to avoid: don't add negative keywords too aggressively in one pass. Block the clearly irrelevant terms first, then monitor performance for a week or two before going further. Over-blocking can accidentally cut off relevant traffic, especially with phrase and broad match keywords.

Step 3: Restructure Ad Groups Around Tightly Themed Keyword Sets

Ad relevance suffers when one ad group contains keywords with very different intents or topics. Google can't serve an ad that's genuinely relevant to all of them, so it serves something generic, and generic ads get lower CTRs and worse relevance ratings.

Review the ad groups where you found "Below average" Ad Relevance ratings. Open each one and look at the keyword list. Ask yourself: can a single ad copy honestly and specifically address every keyword in this group? If the answer is no, the ad group needs to be split.

A tightly themed ad group typically contains keywords that share the same core intent and can all be addressed by the same ad copy. There's no magic number, but a group of 5 to 15 closely related keywords is a reasonable range. The test is whether your headline and description can speak directly to every keyword in the group without feeling generic.

For example, imagine you're running ads for a project management tool. Keywords like "project management software," "task management app," and "team task tracker" belong together. But "project management certification" and "project management templates" have different intents and should live in separate ad groups with their own tailored copy.

Before you start restructuring, it helps to cluster your keywords first. Keyword clustering means grouping related terms by topic and intent before you build your ad group structure. This prevents the sprawl that causes relevance issues in the first place, and it gives you a clear map of which terms belong together.

Keywordme includes a keyword clustering feature that helps you group related search terms and keywords quickly, directly in the interface. This makes it easier to see which terms should be consolidated and which need their own dedicated group before you start restructuring campaigns.

After restructuring, give the new ad groups a few weeks to accumulate data. Then check whether the Ad Relevance rating for affected keywords has moved from "Below average" to "Average" or "Above average." That's your confirmation that the restructure worked.

One pitfall: don't go so granular that managing the account becomes impractical. The goal is logical groupings with coherent themes, not perfect one-keyword-per-ad-group setups that multiply your workload without meaningful relevance gains.

Step 4: Write Ad Copy That Matches Keyword Intent and Lifts CTR

Expected CTR measures whether Google predicts users will click your ad when it appears for a given keyword. A "Below average" rating means Google's historical data suggests your ad isn't compelling or relevant enough relative to other ads competing for the same searches.

The most direct fix is writing ad copy that closely matches the intent behind the keyword, not just the keyword itself.

Start with your headlines. Including the keyword or a close variant in at least one headline creates visual relevance. When someone searches a term and sees it reflected back in the ad, they're more likely to recognize it as relevant and click. This isn't about keyword stuffing; one clear, relevant headline beats three awkward ones with the keyword forced in.

Beyond keyword inclusion, your ad copy needs to answer the implicit question the searcher is asking. Informational queries need different copy than transactional ones. Someone searching "how to improve Google Ads Quality Score" wants guidance. Someone searching "Google Ads management tool" is closer to a purchase decision. The tone, offer, and call to action should reflect that difference.

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) are the current standard format in Google Ads Search campaigns. With RSAs, you provide multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google tests combinations to find which perform best. Use this to your advantage: write a range of headlines that approach the keyword from different angles, some focused on the feature, some on the benefit, some on the offer. Google will favor the combinations that drive higher CTR over time.

Assets (formerly called ad extensions) are another lever here. Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets give your ad more real estate on the page and more reasons for someone to click. They also signal to Google that your ad is well-configured, which can support your overall ad quality signals. If your current ads aren't using assets, add them.

If your CTR is consistently low across a campaign and you're not sure why, it's worth looking at the broader picture of what might be suppressing clicks. There are several structural and copy-related reasons why Google Ads CTR can stay low even when your targeting looks right.

After updating ad copy, monitor CTR at the keyword level. Improvement in the Expected CTR rating typically follows sustained CTR improvement over several weeks, as Google accumulates enough new data to update its prediction.

Step 5: Fix the Landing Page Experience

Landing Page Experience is Google's assessment of whether your page delivers what the searcher expected, based on their query and your ad. It covers three dimensions: relevance, usability, and transparency.

Start by identifying which keywords have a "Below average" Landing Page Experience rating. These are your targets. For each one, visit the actual landing page the keyword sends traffic to and evaluate it honestly against what the searcher would expect.

Relevance: Does the page content directly reflect the keyword and ad? If someone searches for a specific product or service and your ad promises it, they should land on a page dedicated to that product or service, not your homepage or a generic category page. Mismatched landing pages are one of the most common causes of poor Landing Page Experience ratings, and they're usually straightforward to fix by creating or linking to more specific pages.

Usability: Google evaluates mobile-friendliness and page load speed as part of landing page experience. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to identify technical issues that might be slowing your page down or creating a poor mobile experience. Slow load times frustrate users and increase bounce rates, both of which feed back into Google's assessment of your page quality.

Transparency: Your page should clearly explain what you offer, who you are, and what the user should do next. Thin pages, pages with no clear value proposition, or pages that obscure pricing or contact information tend to get lower ratings. Google's systems are looking for signals that the page is trustworthy and genuinely useful to the visitor.

For high-value ad groups, consider building dedicated landing pages rather than sending traffic to existing site pages. A page designed specifically around the keyword theme and the ad's promise will almost always outperform a generic page on both relevance and conversion.

One thing to keep in mind: don't over-optimize for Google at the expense of the actual user. A page that genuinely converts well, because it's clear, fast, and relevant, typically also satisfies Google's landing page criteria. The two goals align more than they conflict.

After making substantive page changes, "Below average" Landing Page Experience ratings typically take a few weeks to update, as Google needs to re-evaluate the page with new data.

Step 6: Apply the Right Match Types to Protect Relevance

Match types directly affect which search terms trigger your keywords, and therefore which signals Google uses when evaluating your Quality Score. Getting the match type wrong for a keyword can undermine the relevance improvements you've made everywhere else.

Broad match keywords can trigger a wide range of queries, including many that have little to do with your actual keyword. This can suppress CTR and ad relevance if you're not managing the keyword carefully. Broad match can work well when paired with smart bidding and a strong negative keyword list, but without those guardrails, it often introduces noise that drags Quality Score down.

Exact and phrase match give you tighter control over which search terms trigger your ads. This makes it easier to maintain strong relevance signals because the queries triggering your keyword are more predictable and more closely related to the keyword itself.

For keywords with low Quality Scores, review the match type you're using. If a broad match keyword is consistently triggering irrelevant traffic despite negative keyword work, consider adding a phrase or exact match version of the same keyword to capture the high-intent traffic more precisely. You can run both versions and compare performance.

Keywordme lets you apply match types to keywords directly from the Search Terms Report. When you identify a high-performing search term, you can add it as an exact or phrase match keyword immediately, without leaving the Google Ads interface or copying terms into a spreadsheet.

For a deeper look at how match types interact with cost and conversion performance, it's worth reading about the impact of match types on CPC and conversions, as well as when to apply match types in Google Ads. And if you're weighing broad match against exact match for a specific situation, there's practical guidance on when to use broad match versus exact match keywords.

One pitfall: don't assume exact match is always the right answer. Broad match with smart bidding can perform well when your negative keyword list is tight and you have enough conversion data for Google's bidding algorithms to work with. The right match type depends on your campaign's data maturity and how well-managed your negatives are.

Your Quality Score Improvement Checklist

Improving Google Ads Quality Score is a process, not a one-time fix. Here's the six-step workflow in a format you can bookmark and work through systematically:

1. Add QS columns and identify low-scoring keywords. Go to the Keywords tab, add Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience columns. Sort by score and prioritize high-spend keywords scoring 6 or below.

2. Review the Search Terms Report and add negatives. Identify irrelevant and low-intent queries triggering your keywords. Add them as negative keywords. Promote high-performing search terms to dedicated keywords.

3. Split broad ad groups into tightly themed sets. Review ad groups with "Below average" Ad Relevance. If keywords inside cover multiple distinct intents, restructure into focused groups where one ad can speak to all keywords.

4. Update ad copy to match keyword intent. Write headlines that include the keyword or a close variant. Align the message with what the searcher actually wants. Use RSA headlines and descriptions to test multiple angles. Add assets if you haven't already.

5. Audit and improve landing page relevance and usability. Check that each landing page reflects the keyword and ad promise. Run PageSpeed Insights for technical issues. Make sure the page is clear, fast, and transparent about what you offer.

6. Review match types for low-QS keywords. Assess whether your match type mix is introducing irrelevant traffic. Add phrase or exact match versions where broad match is creating noise.

Keep in mind that Quality Score changes take time. Google needs new data to recalculate component ratings, so expect a few weeks before you see ratings shift after making changes. Quality Score is a trailing indicator: fix the underlying issues first, and the score will follow.

If the Search Terms Report review feels like the biggest bottleneck in your workflow, you're not alone. It's one of the most time-consuming parts of ongoing PPC optimization. Start your free 7-day trial of Keywordme and see how much faster you can work through it directly inside Google Ads, without spreadsheets, without switching tabs, and without the friction that slows most optimization work down. After the trial, it's $12 per month per user.