I have seen a lot of discussions around structuring the Google ads ad groups. Different people have different approaches to it. In general, you will three kinds of people who create campaigns or ad groups:
- One who likes to create based on the logical structure of the keywords but they do not think much about the keywords.
- One who likes to keep all different variant of the keywords in an ad group
- One who likes to create different ad groups based on the keyword match types
In this discussion, I would like to mainly discuss the point 2 and 3.
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What happens when you keep all keyword match types/ variants in the same ad group?
When you put all the keyword variants in the same ad group, yes, they do compete with each other but there are a lot of other factors which allow Google to prefer a keyword based on the user’s search query over other.
Restrictive keyword match
If more than one keyword match to a particular search term, Google takes the restrictive approach and will try to prefer the closest or exact keyword.
Example:
Let’s say the search term is food delivery online and your ad group includes all the keyword match type such as food delivery online, +food +delivery +online, “Food delivery online”, [food delivery online]. In this example, the exact match would be preferred over the other keyword match types provided other factors also support this.
Situation 1 – when the exact match might not be preferred
Let us say here is the bidding:
- food delivery online = $7.5
- +food +delivery +online = $3
- “food delivery online” = $2.5
- [food delivery online] = $1
This is again not a perfect example because here the factors such as ad rank, competitor’s bid etc. will come into the play. But, assuming that those conditions are not affecting the decision by Google ads, then in that case, here broad match will be preferred. Though this bidding structure looks bad, but, still people do this.
Situation 2 – when the exact match might not be preferred
Let us say here is the ad rank of each keyword:
- food delivery online = 1
- +food +delivery +online = 3
- “food delivery online” = 5
- [food delivery online] = 6
This is again not a perfect example because here the factors such as bidding, competitor’s bid, landing page optimization etc. will come into the play. But, assuming that those conditions are not affecting the decision by Google ads, then in that case, here broad match will be preferred. Though this ad rank assumption looks bad, this is just for an example.
Things to remember
- Place a higher bid on the exact matches if you are focussing on the conversions.
What happens when you create ad groups based on the match type?
Again, this topic can fire a lot of discussions but let see what could possibly go wrong or right if you create different ad groups based on the match type.
Situation 1: You might group dissimilar keywords in one ad group
Yes, you might end up focussing more on the keywords match type than grouping the similar keywords logically in the same ad groups. Here is an example. Let us here is our sample list of the keywords-
- buy food online
- buy food
- food online
- buy online food
- get food delivery online
- food delivery online
- food delivery
- order food
- order food online
- food ordering online
- home food delivery
- doorstep food delivery
- 24 hours food delivery
- doorstep food delivery online
The first thing you should know is how to group similar and logical keywords in the same ad group. What you might end up here is you focus too much on creating the ad groups based on the match type than their logical structure.
Situation 2: You might forget keeping the other keyword match types in the negative list
This is not new and this also happens frequently by the campaign managers. So, I assume here that you have overcome the situation mentioned above and you have logically grouped the keywords in the ad groups. So the ad groups should look like
Buy food:
- buy food
- food online
- buy online food
Food delivery
- get food delivery online
- food delivery online
- food delivery
- home food delivery
- doorstep food delivery
- 24 hours food delivery
- doorstep food delivery online
Order food
- order food
- order food online
- food ordering online
So, let us choose one ad group from the above on which we will like to set up the tests and that ad group is:
Order food
- order food
- order food online
- food ordering online
So, there are some of the possible Ad groups that you will create out of this ad group:
Order food – Exact Match
- [order food]
- [order food online]
- [food ordering online]
Order food – Phrase Match
- “order food”
- “order food online”
- “food ordering online”
You can create Ad Groups for broad match and Broad match modifier (BMM) as well but for the example purpose, I am only going to consider the phrase and the exact match here. And, also, you have not put anything in the negative keyword list.
So, these ad groups are running and someone searches for the search term “order food online”. In this situation, ads from both of the ad groups will trigger and compete against each other to show. And again, as we have seen before, Google ads will use those techniques to find out the best fit keyword. In a general condition, the exact match will trigger for this particular search term. Thus to avoid that, we put the negative keywords of other match types.
Example –
You can put exact match keywords in the example above as the negative keywords for the phrase match ad group so that there is no internal competition. So, you can have as many ad groups as you want as per the match types but your workload will be more.
How many ad groups shall I create based on the match types?
Again, there is a lot of discussions around it. But there are mostly two groups of people who want to create just two Ad groups based on the keyword match types.
- BMM (Broad Match Modifier) + Exact Match or,
- Phrase Match + Exact match
Now based on the business goals and requirements, you can decide which one to choose from. The main purpose here is to catch broad business terms through BMM or phrase match and drive conversion through the exact match while forgetting not to putting the exact match keywords as the negative keywords in the phrase or BMM match type ad groups.
Things to remember
- Before deciding on and proceeding for the Ad group creation, it is necessary to do a logical structuring of the keywords in Ad Groups
- Do not create too many Ad Groups based on the keyword match type, it will increase your work and you will get less time in optimization. Also, it might go against how Google scores an ads account.
- So, preferably, decide in between the phrase or broad match modifier keywords along with exact match to create two Ad Groups based on the keyword match type.
- Forget not to put the exact match keyword as the negative keyword in the phrase match or exact match campaign.
- Be careful of the single word keywords such as Food. Putting [food] as the negative keyword in the phrase or BMM ad groups will completely stop the ads from appearing.