If you want to get the most out of your pay per click campaign on Google Adwords, that is, to get the lowest cost per click (CPC) and the highest position, it is important to get a high quality score.

What is the Google Adwords Quality score (QS)? It is a value that ranges from 0 to 10 based on how relevant Google thinks your ad and landing page is to a particular keyword.

You can view your QS value in your adwords account, under the keywords tab, by clicking on the speech bubble under the "status" column.

A QS of 7/10 is average, 10/10 is what you want to get the most returns from your campaign.

How do you get a high Quality Score? When you first set up a campaign Google has no test data to base your quality score on since your ad has never been run. So they assign a QS based on the relevancy of your advert and landing page to the keyword you are bidding on.

How does Google measure relevancy to determine quality score? They check to see if the keyword you are bidding on is mentioned on the landing page you are sending visitors to from your ad. They also check to see if the keyword is mentioned in the ad itself.

You have 4 lines in each ad (that the visitor sees): the headline, 2 lines for the description, one line for the display URL and 1 line for the destination URL (which the visitor doesn't see). You want to include your bidded keyword in as many parts of the ad as possible.

How do you get the best quality score from the start? To get the best QS from the beginning, make sure your keyword is (at least) included in the the headline and display URL. If you can include the keyword in 2 lines of the description, even better.

Make sure your landing page is relevant and includes the keyword on it too and that visitors to the page find a product or service relevant to your ad.

If visitors don't stick around on your page because it isn't relevant, this leads to a high bounce rate which can also decrease you QS which means you end up paying more for a lower position.

Do all of the above and you will usually get you a QS of 7/10 before the campaign is even run which is a good start. Why? It means you get the highest position and lowest cost per click from the start which means it is easier to get a high Click-Through Rate (CTR) and get a QS of 10/10 which means an even lower CPC and higher position down the line.

What is the most important factor that determines quality score? This is known as Click-Through Rate (CTR). CTR is the measure for the number of times people click on your ad out of every 100 visits to Google. So if 2 people click on your ad, your CTR is 2%.

The reason CTR is so important in determining QS is because CTR actually shows how relevant people think your ad is based on real responses. The more people that click on your ad, shows they like it, which means Google likes it too and rewards you with a higher QS..

If you get a high CTR, you will get a high QS which means you pay less per click and get a higher position.

What is a high CTR? This figure varies but over 2% is above the average.

Summing up I hope you found this article useful, i've done my best to explain Google AdWords from my own experiences. But the best way to learn is to open an account and experiment with the system. Don't worry about making mistakes. You can set up your campaigns any way you like and set a budget of as little as $5 per day.