Google GOAL = the same As YOUR GOAL
Ad-Rank is an algorithm used by Google Ads to decide how your ads will be displayed and which ones are shown first. It combines both the relevance and quality of your ad with its bid to determine which ads show higher results on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The main aim of Ad Rank is to show the best result for a user that matches their query, also called the landing page, by sorting bids based on relevance, quality score, and the actual bid amount.
Ad Rank helps Google pair users with the most relevant ads and helps advertisers get their ads seen by high-intention searchers. Ad Rank also provides insight into how competitive your marketing efforts are in comparison to other advertisers targeting the same keywords and audience.
A landing page is a unique type of web page that is the very first thing visitors see when they access your website. It’s important because it serves as your first impression and presents an opportunity to have visitors perform a desired action, such as pressing a button, downloading a PDF document, or filling out a form. A landing page usually doesn’t have a menu bar and other navigation elements.
Let’s Reverse Engineer Googles Business Model
Google makes money if advertisers spend money! The more you spend, the more Google earns with an estimation of 81.04 Billion USD in 2024 according to Oberlo. Advertisers, like you, only want to spend their advertising budget on Google if they see an increase in their business. That means you don’t want any users on your website. You want relevant traffic from users that are interested in your product or service. That brings us back to the first sentence “Google wants to match the best landing page to the user’s search query.” So the change of this user to convert is more likely than just some random match.
Ad-Rank vs CPC
What a lot of advertisers don’t understand is the importance of Ad-Rank. Ad-Rank is the determining factor of your ad placement not the height of your CPC bid!
Ad Rank is calculated using your bid amount, your auction-time ad quality (including expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landingpage experience), the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of an auction, the context of the person’s search (for example, the person’s location, device, time of search, the nature of the search terms, the other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes), and the expected impact of assets and other ad formats.
Google help pages
| Ad-Rank | Impression on Absolute Top | Impression on Top | Imp (Abs top) % | Imp (top) % | |
| Advertiser A | 80 | 1 | 1 | 100% | 100% |
| Advertiser B | 50 | – | 1 | – | 100% |
| Advertiser C | 30 | – | – | – | – |
| Advertiser D | 10 | – | – | – | – |
Assume that the respective Ad Rank of each of the advertisers is 80, 50, 30, 10, and 5.
If the minimum Ad Rank necessary to show above the search results is 40, only the first two advertisers (with Ad Ranks of 80 and 50) exceed the minimum and show above the search results.
If the minimum Ad Rank necessary to show below the search results is 8, then two of the three remaining advertisers (with Ad Ranks of 30 and 10) will show beneath the search results. The advertiser with an Ad Rank of 5 didn’t meet the minimum Ad Rank and so won’t show at all.
Read more on this example and how Ad-Rank works in this article In this article Google also explains how to get a better positioning of your ad:
To improve your share of the top and absolute top location on the search result page, you can:
Google help pages
– Improve the quality of your ads and landingpage experience
– Increase your bid
Note the Ad quality and landing page experience are placed above the height of your bid. Suggesting Google finds it more important to have better-quality ads and better-quality landing pages. This makes perfect sense because they both decide if the user that did a search in the first place is satisfied or not. And after all, that aligns with their mission:…
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
A small recap: to win the Ad Auction aim for the highest Ad-Rank not the highest CPC-bid. In fact, your actual CPC can become lower because your Ad-Rank is higher, meaning you pay less.
Improve your Ad-Rank
Here are 3 tips that should help you improve your Ad-Rank
- CTR Google looks at the expected CTR! The reason behind this is simple. Google gets paid when a user clicks on your page. In order to optimize for your CTR you should include your keywords in your headline. Your headline should also give people a reason to click on your Ad. My favorite way to do this is with a hook. If you need some inspiration for advertising hooks with examples take a look at this 3 part web series
- Relevance Each of your Ads should be relevant to the user search query. The way to do this is by optimizing your account structure. At House of brands we set up campaigns for each conversion action, we want on the account. For instance subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a whitepaper and purchasing a product. A Campaign can have multiple Ad-Groups
- Quality of your landing page The Quality of your landing page consists of different ranking factors. A useful tool is the keyword quality score. Here you can see the Ad-Relevance between your ad, the keyword your ad triggers on and the landing page. You also see the landing page experience. These are more technical in nature and consist of First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, Largest Contentful Paint, Time to Interactive, Total Blocking Time and Cumulative Layout Shift. You can measure your site performance using this tool
Another good reason to pay attention to this is the “The Page Experience Update.” also known as the “Core Web Vitals” update. This update was rolled out on June 16th, 2021, as part of a broad core algorithm update Google did to their Algorithm.
House Of Brands Media Conclusion
When it comes to setting up campaigns with House of Brands Media, one of the most important steps is to start by creating a well-structured account. You must consider what actions you want visitors to take that will result in measurable conversions and then tailor your Ad-Groups, keywords, and Ads accordingly. Once you are driving relevant traffic to your website landing pages through your Google Ads, you can begin optimizing for conversions, Ad rank is an important often overlooked aspect of this process.