Poor quality score for tech support campaigns has been a quite a problem for companies running PPC campaigns for tech support industry. Due to high competition, trademark and other policies, low budget, high bounce rate and historically low CTR for industry getting a high QS is pretty problematic nowadays.

Many a advertisers/tech support companies have stopped looking at QS and instead started focussing on ROI of campaigns.

Now this is perfectly ok for highly competitive industry like remote tech support. But look what it has done now, with QS ever low 'cost per click' is increasing month by month. New advertisers are forced to bid higher and higher to bring healthy number of calls. This hits thier bottom line and profit margin decreases considerably.

Despite present dismal situation there's lot that can be done to improve QS and decrease overall campaign cost. When talking about tech support industry in particular the factors (not all) which influence the QS are following:

a) Trademark Policy of Google : For advertisers who started using adwords account recently they would have found that the Trademark Brand names can't be used anymore in ad copies. While you must have seen other ads having samw keywords in ad copies. This was a while ago, now Google might disapprove old ads also which carry trademark terms in as copies with no authorization from trademark owner.
Now Why  not having a brand trademark name in ad copy impact the quality score of keywords ? You must have heard about the relevancy mantra of Google. Google biggest concern is providing quality content to online users. While using google one should be able to find out what s/he intends to find. This was never an easy task as understanding a search query would require an intelligence equivalent to human being. Years of research and power of analytics has made it nearly possible for google search engine to emulate human behaviour. If I keep getting relevant results from google then I will come back to it. Thats the quality control rule whcich governs google.

So how google finds out relevancy for the ads that it is serving on search page. Google starts from very basic level and look for use of similar keywords in keywords list, ad copies and landing page. Thats where trademark policy makes the difference. For all the advertisers who are targeting brand keywords like "brand support" and have beautifully designed landing pages, the ad copies severes the relevancy link. Adwords algorithm can't find use of same keywords in all three :keyword list, ad copies, and landing page. Naturally the when you hover over the bubble of your keywords in your account you will see lots of low ad relevance status.

b) Use of Number prohibited in Ad : This is the one of the biggest changes google has made recently which will impact many advertisers from this industry. The one and the only action that we want from our online visitor is to call us. Now you can't use any number in ads. Though many advertisers have found some sort of deceptive alternatives by using Alphanumeric numbers in ad, still its not as effective it used to be.
How it impacts? Despite using call extensions people who would be calling without clicking has reduced significantly. Users won't click on ad if they don't see number, because at first place the number is what they were searching for. With reduction in CTR and ROI the profit margins would be lesser.


c) High bounce rate : This is one of the most ignored parameter when we are analysing the relevancy of the landing page. Google would instantly know when a visitor hits the back button within a few seconds of loading of landing page. Worse still they go on clicking on other ads. Its an automatic signal to adwords algorithm that your landing page is not relevant to users that you are targeting. So its imperative that you hold the attention of customers through your landing page.
You can put video testimonials, they can be made for $20 only nowadays.

If you have any queries please email : targetmyppc@gmail.com

If you guys have used sitelinks with your ads; it, certainly, would have been an overwhelming experience for you. At-least I had the same. Using adwords sitelinks within your ads was one of the most beautiful experience for me.
It was for one of my client who is running his campaign in a highly competitive industry. Fortunately one of their campaign became eligible for sitelinks.

Sitelink ad extensions is one of the nicest feauture offered by Google to only a few advertisers. Generally this feature is available to campaigns which are performing good over a appreciable period of time.

Using Sitelinks is fairly simple : You just need to follow these steps :

1) Go to campaigns
2) Select the Campaign for which you want to add sitelinks.
3) Go to Ad Extensions>> Select View : Sitelinks Extensions.
4) When you have Upgraded Extensions then you will have two options:
   a) You can add extensions at campaign level
   b) Or You can add them adgroup level.

Add different landing pages for different sitelinks. Thats it you are done.

Lets talk about the advantages of Upgraded sitelink over the old ones.

Upgraded sitelinks provide a number of advantages:

1.  First, you can extensions at both adgroup and campaign level.
2.  Secondly unlike ads you can edit sitelinks numerous time and it wont't reset your performance history.
3.  Can be scheduled and customized for mobile devices.

These features provide great value addition to any campaign eligible for sitelinks. It just like "Ads on Steroids". It literally improves the area occupied by the ad and grabs eyeball for a longer period of time. This increases the likelihood of visitor clicking on ad. Its just like pure discrimination on the basis of performance :P.
Anyway the surge in CTR and number if clicks can be misleading, you have to be careful and monitor the perfomance of sitelinks and impact it had on the main ad.
In my client case it improved the QS and CTR significantly. Though difference in ROI was not matching still we got better results.