Many PPC Campaigners don’t give much emphasis to keyword groupings, but it is really important to keep your business afloat and successful in long run. Creation of relevant and organized keyword groups actually help in building relevancy & improving your PPC account’s Quality Score and CPC (cost per click), which is why it is so important!
Keyword grouping & organization helps you in creating:
- Ad groups with improved Quality Scores
- Relevant text ads
- Landing pages that are more user-friendly & contribute highly in research
This guide covers steps that you can use to segment your keywords for a cost-effective and successful PPC campaign.
Step 1: Creation of top-level keyword groups
The initial step is to study the keywords and create the main keyword groups. It is the hardest job and requires thorough research & insight – the best way to start compartmentalizing keywords is by understanding what your users are searching. Try to create main groups around the keywords which are currently the highest performing ones on your campaigns. It will give you an opportunity to begin the sorting & you can start by focusing the keywords which are big one conversion.
Note that top-level keywords should be broad and such that they can be sub-divided into smaller groups with enough opportunity to cover longer search queries i.e. they should be differentiating. A great top-level keyword usually is single-word, preferably a noun i.e. the names of the products that you are offering, like shoes or services like carpentry.
For instance, if I sell cake & I have a high performing keyword ‘birthday cake’. In this case, if I have to choose between ‘birthday’ & ‘cake’ as the name of the main level keyword, I will go for ‘cake’ for it is more differentiating, and is more relevant to the product that I am offering.
Once a few top-level keyword groups are created, you will be able to identify others as you study your sea of keywords. These should be the direct reflection of what you are offering through your Google AdWords campaigns.
Step 2: Create Small Keyword groups with specific subgroups
When the top-level of the keyword hierarchy is established, then it is time to create subgroups. They are second-level groups & usually consist of modifiers which shed light on what your first-level keyword-groups offer. They usually consist of brands, types & other features.
For instance, if ‘cake’ is the first-level group keyword, the second-level keyword-groups might tell about this cake, like, the occasion & the kind of cake. The image given below provides a “tree” going from first-level to second-level keywords & so on. It has been seen that some websites even create 3rd & 4th level keyword subgroups, and they are identified as some of the most search-friendly websites on the web. But one thing should be noted here, as the tree progresses, make sure that every branch of the tree should add intent; moreover, by creating multilevel-subgroups longer search queries can be easily targeted with success.
The last or the deepest level of intent – i.e. the smallest sub-group – consists of one of the Orientation terms – investigative, transactional or instructional terms.
While transactional term in the search indicates that the searcher is a bit late in the buying cycle, an investigative term can help figure out whether the searcher can be a prospective buyer or not. Users searching instructive terms are taken as probable opportunities for conversion. By including these terms one can bring visitors to their website which are more likely to buy.
How many keywords should be there in a group? First of all, the number of keywords actually doesn’t matter, what matters is the relevancy. Instead of piling more and more keywords into the group, try to keep the keywords related. Normally search marketers never create a group with more than 100 keywords & less than 5 keywords.
Step 3: Optimize your AdWords keyword groups
After the keywords hierarchy has been implemented & done with, next step is to identify and sort out small but significant things which are affecting your paid search campaign’s performance.
- Plurals & Derivations should be kept with parent group; avoid creating a sub or separate groups in these cases. Keep plurals (for instance umbrellas fort umbrella) & derivations of keywords (for example, “cooking” is a derivation of “cook”) in the parent group
- Misspellings: Same applies to misspellings, don’t dedicate a separate group to the common misspellings; actually you should not include them in your keyword groups. This is so because, search engines like Google & Bing, detect misspellings and even notifies the user about it so that they can use the correct version.
- Synonyms and Variations: While in the above cases you should not create separate groups or sub-groups, in case of synonyms & variations, it is actually a good idea to do so. It would eventually reflect well on the Quality Score. To understand it better, here is an example; suppose, your ad include the keyword tart, while the user is searching pie; by including pie in the synonym group, Google will be able to find pie in your ad and hence will mark it as more relevant and useful to the user. Pie will be highlighted in the ad text visible on the search and will eventually contribute to the Quality score and the Click through rate.
- Duplicate Keywords: Consider an example; suppose you have two ad groups, one has keyword ‘candy’ and the other has ‘bar’. Now if you have to allot ‘candy bar’ to one group, which one it would be? It can be added to both, but it is nothing but a means to increase daily spend, & it also has the tendency to backfire. But still, it is a great way to see in which group the keyword performs better. Or you can do another thing and create a separate group for the keyword; that way it will not ruin your daily spend.
Step 4: Research, Research & Research some more
Just like research and other search marketing processes, organization and grouping of keywords should also be an ongoing process. This is crucial because with time your business will grow, and with that, you will need to improve your keywords & that is only possible if you devote enough time to research. Continuous research is the key to success; doing it once and relying on the work once done will only sustain you for the time being, it is also possible that the campaign’s results might degrade with time.
The success of your PPC Campaigns depends on how often you research & add new keywords to your groupings. And to keep them in an organized state, you will have to create new keyword groups now and again plus the content to back them. To keep your campaigns stable in the market, regular research will allow you to keep abreast with the change in the industry and the emerging keyword trends.
Images – Wordstream
