Your Google Ad keywords are a critical part of your PPC search campaign set-up – they’re the machine that allows your campaign to spend. Being a huge Formula One fan, I like to think of Google Ads keywords as the engine of an F1 car. The engine may have several set-ups or different ways it could run, but the car simply wouldn’t move without an engine.
Keywords are the same, they allow your Google search advertisements to be displayed to relevant users.
How to conduct Google Ads Keyword Research
There are several tools available to help you conduct Google Ad keyword research like SEMRush or Google Search Console, but Google Ads Keyword Planner is often the go-to tool. You can find it by going to Tools and Settings > Planning > Keyword Planner in your Google Ads account.
Once you’re in the keyword planner, you’re going to want to search for keywords that match your business’ products or services. For example, if you sell “leather boots”, you might want to target keywords such as “leather boots for women”, “men’s leather boots”, “leather ankle boots” or “high leather boots”.
When conducting this research, you should add these keyword ideas into an Excel or Google Sheet, so you can start theming your keywords into relevant ‘piles’ which can be used as an ad group structure when building your campaigns. Uploading bulk data from a sheet into Google Ads is also very simple with Google Ads Editor.
In this case, you might want to target both men’s and women’s leather boots keywords, but have them in different ad groups, because they have their own bespoke landing pages.
Not sure what keywords to target to begin with? Keyword planner can also scrape specific pages of your website, which can uncover potential keyword ideas based on your page’s content.
Going back to our Formula One example, an F1 team will very rarely change their engine across a season, and only do so when it’s required. F1 teams will spend the off-season perfecting their car’s set-up before a race even takes place. This is so they can get the best competitive advantage on the track, and not have to spend valuable time in the race season to fix a poor-performing car.
Sometimes an F1 team may need to replace their engine if it’s not performing optimally. Google Ads is the same: you’ll want to make sure that all your keywords are entirely relevant to your products or services, before you run the ad, otherwise your performance may fall and ultimately require you to scrap your existing keywords and start again.
Target keywords with high average monthly search volume
Our key tip is to target keywords with >10 Avg. Monthly Search Volume. If you’re targeting keywords that don’t have any search volume, Google will flag this keyword as having ‘Low Search Volume’, so it’s best to avoid these. On new accounts where there’s no campaign activity, you’ll likely be given a range of average monthly search volumes a keyword has driven, rather than an exact number.
Avoid mixed search intent
Try to avoid keywords that may contain mixed search intent. For example, if you sell “leather boots”, but they aren’t waterproof, do not target the keyword “leather waterproof boots”. This will only lead to you targeting users who are likely searching for “waterproof boots”. Ultimately, driving the wrong intent will always lead to poor performance and wasted ad spend, as you will undoubtedly see irrelevant search queries. One word can significantly alter the intent behind a user’s search.
Keywords vs Search Queries
There is a stark difference between keywords and search queries in your Google Ads accounts. Keywords are what you give Google and are what your ad ranks for, whereas your search queries are the exact searches a user makes to see your ad.
For example, an advertiser might target the keyword “leather boots” but notice that most users who see the ad through this keyword are actually searching for “leather boots online”.
Your search query reports identify potential opportunities in an account, such as adding in new keywords to a campaign that you might have missed, as well as offer data for you to make informed decisions about negating certain queries.
Which Google Ads Keyword Match Type should I use?
After you’ve completed extensive research on what keywords you want to target for your product or service, you’re going to want to decide which match type is best for your key performance indicators. There are three options, all of which have their own useful benefits
Exact match keywords
Exact match is the most restrictive match type. Users will only see your ad if they enter the exact keyword into the Google search bar. Using the leather boots example, I wouldn’t see the ad if I were to search “leather boots near me”, if the keyword was just [leather boots].
This match type is particularly strong if you have a low daily budget (<£15 per day) and are concerned about wasted ad spend.
Phrase match keywords
Phrase match keywords will show your ad if a user’s search query contains the phrase of the keyword you’re targeting. In this case, I would see the advertiser’s ad if I were to search for “leather boots near me”, and the keyword was “leather boots”, since the keyword is mentioned in the search query.
Phrase match keywords typically have a higher CPC than exact match terms since they are reaching a wider audience. They can also have higher CPAs since their intent is not exactly the keyword the user is looking for, so these naturally have a lower conversion rate most of the time.
This match-type strategy should be used if you have a higher budget and want to reach more users outside of exact match targeting. Phrase match keywords are great at identifying new keyword opportunities to target, and irrelevant search queries to negate from a campaign.
Broad match keywords
Broad match is the least restrictive match type of them all and allows advertisers to bid on other keywords Google thinks are relevant to the keyword you’ve given it. For example, “leather boots” as a keyword might drive the search query “waterproof shoes online”. This match type doesn’t require the search query to contain the keyword, as long as Google believes the intent is similar.
Broad match requires lots of optimisations, such as frequent search query checks and significant negative keywords in place to combat irrelevant queries that could come through the account. This strategy also works best when running a smart bidding strategy, since broad match keywords use conversion data to aid its bids. If you don’t have conversion tracking set-up in your account, this match type is not for you.
Unsure on how to set up conversion tracking in your account? We’d be happy to help!
If you’re launching a new account, our recommendation would be to start off with exact and phrase match keywords, building healthy negative keyword lists for the first three to six months of your campaign. Once you start to see that almost all of your search queries are highly relevant to your campaign intent, with strong conversion data to back it up, we’d suggest creating an experiment campaign to test your exact and phrase match keywords against a broad match type strategy.
The exception to using a broad match strategy when you launch a campaign is if you are running a Google Grant account, which is where charities and non-profit organisations can qualify to get a free $10,000 to spend per month. Since these accounts receive free money, using a broad match strategy can help Grant accounts reach more users. Therefore, it’s best to use an exact, phrase and broad match strategy on these accounts.
Close variants
While all of the above is true, in the past few years Google has been introducing ‘close variants’ to search query reports at phrase and exact match level. It means that even if you have the keyword [leather boots] set at exact match level, a search query such as “buy leather boots” could still rank for this keyword at exact match level. This is because Google sees the search query as very similar to the keyword that it classifies as a close variant. Annoyingly, this is not a feature you can turn off, so it’s something to be aware of when launching your Google Ad campaigns.
Below is an image of what search queries could be driven by respective keywords and their match types:
What are negative keywords in Google Ads
Implementing negative keywords is one of, if not the most, important optimisations you can make to search campaigns. They allow you to stop your ads from appearing on irrelevant search queries that your keyword might be ranking for. Negative keywords can be applied at ad group, campaign and account level (via negative keyword lists).
When to use negative keywords lists
Negative keyword lists should be used when you want to exclude negatives across more than one campaign. For example, you might want to negate your brand name across your non-brand search campaigns, to prevent any brand-name overlap on campaigns. They’re also useful if you want to prevent a specific location from being used in user search queries. For example, you might want to target “event halls London” as a keyword, but not rank for London Borough terms, such as Chelsea, Kensington, Wembley etc. Creating a ‘London Boroughs’ negative keyword list allows you to negate all irrelevant boroughs, and set them across specific campaigns.
Below is an image of how negative keywords work based on their match type used.
When to use negative keywords at ad group level
Setting negative keywords at the ad group level is equally as important as the campaign or negative keyword list level. Ad group negatives should be set when you want to cross-negative your ad group intent. For example, if I had a ‘Mens Leather Boots’ and ‘Women’s Leather Boots’ ad group in the same campaign, the best practice would be to negate “women” from the men’s ad group, and vice versa. Not only does this prevent users from seeing the wrong ad, but it often leads to cheaper CPCs.
Don’t ignore the keyword data
Ultimately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to testing keywords and their match types. However, you can utilise the data you receive as a key step in overtaking your competitors. Formula One teams conduct hundreds of engine tests across a season using the data their cars produce. Don’t be scared to make slight tweaks to keywords, or pause poor-performing keywords in the account, as long as your decisions are data-justified.
Still struggling to perform keyword research or interpret the data your keywords are producing? Contact our PPC Team today.
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