Structure > Keywords

In Adwords keywords are, well... key. There's no denying that. Personally however, I believe that structure is ultimately more important than the keywords. Picking keywords isn't really where the magic happens. Most business owners can come up with a semi-decent keyword list on their own, but the disconnect is in the implementation. Deciding how to structure these keywords into groups is where you go from a dude with a bucket full of keywords to a man with a plan.

We take over a lot of existing Adwords accounts and one of the most common mistakes we see is the Bucket campaign. A bucket is where you have done all your keyword research and then dumped all the keywords into one ad group. This isn't a good way to run an account. In Adwords the goal is to match the topic of your ad as closely to the user query as possible. To succeed at Adwords you need to divide your ad groups down to the smallest unit possible and then target your ad text to that subject and land your visitors on the most relevant page possible. To take the time to do it right is good for your click through rates, your quality score, the user's experience, and most importantly your conversion rate.

What I do first when setting up an account is pull together every possible keyword. I parse through the site, the individual products, competitor's sites, enthusiast sites, and industry sites looking for keyword inspiration and collect it all in an Excel file. Once that monster list of keywords is in place, start looking for themes and trends in it. When I start to find trends or clusters of similar words I drag them into their own columns (having a dual monitor set up can be really useful for this!). To help illustrate, let's pretend we're working on a surf shop's web site. You would break their keyword list into: surfboards, wetsuits, board shorts, footwear, t-shirts, hats, etc.

Once you have your first sort completed start looking at your columns of keywords, how can this be separated even more? Let's start by looking at wetsuits. Your wetsuits can be broken down into general keywords (wetsuit), branded keywords (Body Glove, O'Neil, Blueseventy, Billabong, Aquasphere, etc.), and style of wetsuit (full suits, hooded suits, spring suits, triathlon suits). If appropriate you may even want to take some of these groups and break them into even smaller pieces by product within your brands (Blueseventy Helix, Blueseventy Point Zero, Blueseventy Reaction), or whatever logical grouping you may have available. An ad with a headline like "BlueSeventy Helix Wetsuit" is going to capture a lot more quality traffic than one that reads "Surf Shop Deals Here."

I realize what I've laid out here is a lot of work, but right and easy aren't typically the same thing. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and make the process from search to purchase as easy as possible. Doing things right the first time will save you a lot of time and money down the road.

The Granularization of Keywords

There's a good chance Granularization isn't actually a word, yet. However the principle behind it is more important to your Adwords account than the actual existence of the word, kind of like 'truthiness.'

The more specialized your ad group, the more effective your campaign will be.

That's my campaign building mantra. A common mistake people make in setting up their accounts is to decide on campaign topics and then throw all the related words in one ad group. I call this the 'Bucket Approach.' Once all your words are in the bucket, your ad or ads will be shown for any keyword in the bucket. Because of this you're going to have to write a pretty generic ad. This is going to hurt your relevance, quality score, click through rate, and ultimately your wallet.

Now I'm not saying you can't use a 'bucket' group every once and a while, it has its uses. They can be good for testing the impression levels of new words for an existing account. After they've gained some data you'll be able to tell if the words deserve their own ad groups, should be dropped completely, or may be fit for an existing ad group.

So how do you set up your account for maximum effectiveness?
Granularization.

Keyword research is a lot of work, and you're going to amass lots and lots of words. Having the right words is just the first step... fight the urge to toss them in a bucket! Start looking for themes and key root words in your list. Divide it into as many reasonable, logical, relevant groups as you can.

One example of granularizing a campaign is if you carry foreign languages. An ad group that covers all of them at once isn't going to be very effective, but if you break it into 1 or more ad groups per language you're going to do much better. Your word groupings will be tighter, your quality score should be higher, and your ad can be more targeted and thus get better click through rates. If a query for "Learn Swedish" triggers ads for "Learn a Language" and "Learn Swedish Today" you can guess which one is going to perform better. "Learn Swedish Today" is more relevant to the search engine and the searcher. You get the click because you're giving the people what they want.

Kick the bucket, Granularize, and give the people what they want!

Those three things will help you succeed in the PPC game. Put in a little extra work up front in structuring good campaigns and delivering relevant solutions to user queries PPC, and you'll be able to break out your old bucket to carry money all the way to the bank.