By now many of you would have come across the latest feature released by Google Adwords called “Account Health Score for Search”. It can be found in the opportunities tab of the AdWords interface, where it displays a certain score along with a list of suggestions to improve your account health across various parameters, as shown in the image below.

So What’s this “Account Health Score for Search” all about?

This is a beta tool introduced by Google that analyses the AdWords account and grades it based on how well the Search Network campaigns are configured. It comes with a set of recommendations that when implemented, will help in improving the score and performance of your search campaigns. The score is between 0% and 100%. The better your campaigns are configured, the better it performs in terms of conversions and cost per conversion (lead or online sale). While starting a new ppc campaign or optimising an adwords campaign can be quite tedious, this tools gives you a ready checklist.

How to check the score and get started?

When you click on the get started button, you’ll be taken to the page where all the live search campaigns currently running in your account will be listed along with its health. Additionally, it also gives you a set of recommendations to improve the score for every campaign as shown in the image below:

Does the account health score matter to you?

For all businesses, there are a certain set of goals that needs to be achieved to succeed and ward off the competition. Some of the most important goals of businesses are as follows:

• Increasing Website Traffic
• Increasing CTR
• Increasing CVR
• Increasing ROI
• Reducing Waste Spends

Increasing Traffic to Your Website:

If you don’t get any traffic to your website or the landing page, it will be similar to living in a ghost town with no people. Nobody wants that and paid traffic is one of the quickest ways to acquire your customers. While running search ads, Google recommends a certain set of suggestions which helps you in increasing the traffic to your website. They're as follows:

• Adding call extensions – The utilisation of call extensions will help in increasing the traffic to the website by driving calls to your business.
• Ad groups with keywords – An ad group without keyword is like an aeroplane without fuel. To enable your ad groups to run, add at least one keyword to each ad group.
• Ad groups should have enough keywords – Adding additional, relevant keywords can help you reach potential customers who aren't seeing your ads. Hence you should have enough keywords to have higher traffic to your website.
• Ad groups with active ads – Your ad groups won’t be active until at least one of the ad copy is live. Hence, if you want your ad groups to run, then create at least one ad in your empty ad groups.
• Showing ads on Google search partners – Even though Google has a vast inventory and reach in the world, targeting Google search partners will increase the number of people who can see your ads, thereby helping you in obtaining additional traffic to your website.
• Using a recommended daily budget – When your budget gets limited, it will impact your ad delivery which in turn will result in losing out on reaching out to your potential audience. Hence using a recommended daily budget will help in gaining additional traffic to your website.

Increasing Click Through Rate (CTR):

Click Through Rate (commonly referred to as “CTR”) is a commonly used metric by digital advertisers to measure the success of an online advertising campaign. The higher the CTR, the more effective the marketing campaign will be in bringing traffic to a website. Google has listed out some set of recommendations for achieving higher CTR. They’re as follows:

• Adding Callout extensions - The purpose of adding Callout extensions is to improve the CTR. It gives more information about your business in addition to the message conveyed in the ad.
• Ad groups should have multiple ad variations – It’s a well-known fact that every individual has different preferences and likes. Hence, having multiple ad variations would help in connecting with your target audience well, thereby increasing your CTR.
• Adding Sitelink extensions – Sitelink extensions are individual sections of the website through which you could direct your potential customers so that they can quickly find what they're looking for.
• Using first page bids for high-quality Keywords – There's a saying that we can bury the dead body on the second page of Google's search results. If you want to get quality traffic and high CTR, then you should use first page bids for at least high-quality and valuable keywords.

Increasing Conversion Rate (CVR):

Every digital marketer in the world can acknowledge that conversions are the lifeblood of any online marketing campaigns. The main goal of running a lead generation digital marketing campaign is to acquire customers for your business. Measuring the conversion rate is a crucial metric for all digital businesses. For increasing the average conversion rates, Google suggests to implement a particular set of recommendations which are as follows:

• Using conversion tracking – Using the conversion tracking will aid you in keeping track of which clicks are turning into customers or leads thereby allowing you to optimise your account to target the best clicks.
• Using an optimised ad rotation setting – Based on your goals, you should use appropriate settings for ad rotation. If you want to increase the number of conversions, then "Optimise for conversions" option to get the maximum out of it.
• Using Enhanced CPC – Enabling Enhanced CPC raises your bid for clicks that are more likely to lead to a sale or conversion and lowers your bid for clicks that are less likely to lead to a sale or conversion.

Increasing Return on Investment (ROI):

ROI is typically the most important measurement for advertisers because it shows the real effect that AdWords has on your business. While it's helpful to know the number of clicks and impressions you get, it's even better to know how your ads are contributing to the success of your business. Hence, Google has set of recommendations to implement for getting better results. They’re as follows:

• Using a mobile-friendly site – With mobile usage rising at an exponential rate, having a mobile friendly site would help your customers to have a better experience on the device they use the most.
• Using standard (optimised) delivery – Using optimized delivery of ads will help the advertisers in spending the budget optimally by showing the ads on the most relevant searches throughout the day. This helps in improving the ROI as your ads will always be shown to your intended target audiences whenever they are searching for your products and services.

By implementing these suggestions, it can definitely help in improving your ROI to some extent. To know more about ROI, check out - Measuring ROI of Digital Marketing.

Reducing Waste Spends:

No in the world can create a perfect campaign in one go and forget about it all together. Every advertising campaigns need to be fine tuned and optimised on a continuous basis. One of the important ways to improvise effectiveness of the campaigns is to reduce the waste spends. For this Google recommends you to do the following:

• Adding negative keywords – Having a proper negative keyword management system would help you in reducing the wastage of spends and thereby helping you to ensure that your ads only appear on relevant searches.

Conclusion:

Our recommendation is to make use of this tool and implement all the suggestions provided by Google. It helps you to take advantage of many features that Google has to offer you and get the best out of your advertising efforts.