When I first began pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google Adwords a few years ago I learned to:
- gather together hundreds or thousands of keywords that seemed appropriate for my campaign (from the most highly searched on to the most obscure or “long-tail”);
- stick them into ad groups;
- write ads that matched those ad groups;
- create landing pages that matched those ads; and
…ta-da, I’d have a highly performing Google Adwords campaign!
Only it wasn’t as simple as that. And it certainly isn’t now…
While that was - and IS - broadly the right approach to take, a big problem emerged from gathering all those keywords… one that is even bigger now, given Google’s Quality Score.
You see, with so many keywords to organize, it was all too tempting to bunch lots of unrelated long-tail keywords into the same ad groups. After all, there was little justification in creating individual ad groups for keywords that rarely got searched on.
The result was, however, that I’d end up with generic ads that didn’t quite fit each of the long-tail keywords in a given ad group. And today, such an approach would more than likely lead to a low Google Quality Score. All of which amounted to – and would now amount to - low click-through rates (CTRs), high cost per click (CPC) rates, and low ad positions.
Does that imply that long-tail keywords should be abandoned?
Not necessarily. According to search engine marketing expert, David Szetela, all the keywords in an ad group should be tightly related to each other and to the ad text. So much so that he says PPC advertisers should make this our mantra:
“(Almost) every keyword should appear in the ad text.”
This is important for several reasons including the fact that Google bolds keywords that appear in the ad text which is likely to attract clicks and higher CTRs. Furthermore, it reflects RELEVANCE between the keyword and ad text, which is likely to have a positive impact on Quality Score. And, in sum, your ads will likely get higher CTRs, which will lead to higher quality scores, lower CPCs, higher ad positions… and in turn higher CTRs!
Mr Szetela further recommends you divide and group keywords in your keyword list based on who you are targeting and where they are in the research-shop-buy cycle. In other words, group together keywords that are likely to be used by people in research mode… other keywords used by those in shopping/comparing mode… and others used by people in buying mode.
What if you have some long-tail keywords that just can’t be grouped together in any meaningful way? Well, if they really are long-tail i.e. hardly ever searched on… and they don’t seem related to any other keywords… then… what are they doing in your keyword list? Get rid of ‘em!
Source: David Szetela, “Tightly-Themed Ad Groups: The PPC Pro Advantage”, Search Engine Watch, August 4, 2008
