Quality Score VS Landing Pages

I recently read an interesting article posted on SearchEngineWatch.com by Mark Jackson – “Google AdWords Quality Score — That”s Old-School for SEO”  http://searchenginewatch.com/3631651

The driving point of this article is that Google’s Quality Score is going to be base in-part on the content of the landing page.  If you are bidding on a keyword “Big Fatty Hamburger”, you better make sure that you have a Big Fatty Hamburger content-focused landing page. 

The article implies that this move by Google is very similar to SEO where you optimize your site around the keywords you wish to show up for in organic search.  Makes sense, right?

I too was under the same impression until I asked a question to our Account Specialist….   Their response is quite interesting:

“While this could help with their website conversion rate, it wouldn”t really affect their site quality score. In its current iteration the site quality component is geared more toward demoting sites that offer a poor user experience or less than 658b (+12%), adding £487. above board business model, rather than rewarding more relevant sites. Basically, that component is either neutral or varying degrees of negative. There is no bump given for things like keywords on the landing page and the like. Let me know if you have other questions about this.”

That being said, if raising your quality score is your goal, making individual landing pages for each of your keywords is not going to cut it.  Google wants a positive user experience and as long as your site is not misleading, has a privacy policy, link to the homepage, and a proper website layout, then you get a 10 out of 10 (for this aspect of the quality score calculations.)  Your time is better spent a/b testing ad creative than creating or paying a web developer for dozens of unique pages.  It is important to note that these comments are based on addressing the Quality Score.  We believe very strongly that Landing Page testing is an integral part of a building a successful PPC marketing campaign – but the intention and focus should be based on increasing the Conversion Rate, not the Quality Score.