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How to Organize Keywords into Ad Groups

Posted: February 11, 2007

When creating a PPC account The way in which your keywordsÂ are organized into Ad Groups (orders forÂ adCenter) is essential to PPC success.

It’s one thing to find 1000-1 million good keywords. It’s another to get clicks on these keywords, and yet another to actually get conversions. The first step to organizing any account is how keywords are bundled into Ad Groups.

My rule of thumb is to write one extremely targeted ad that has one purpose and expresses a single intent (you don’t have to actually use this ad, it’s a keyword exercise). When adding new keywords to an Ad Group, if that ad copy doesn’t accurately reflect the keyword, then the keyword needs to be in a new Ad Group. Often the trick is finding the most targeted ad possible.

For instance, let’s take the proverbial plumber.

If the ad copy was:
Emergency Plumber Service
Call 24/7 for immediate assistance.
We work weekends!

And you had keywords such as:
Denver plumbing
emergency plumbing
24 hour plumbing service
plumbing services
broken pipes
fix shower
overflowing toilet
Saturday plumbing
weekend plumbing
flooded basement

It quickly becomes obvious that the keywords: weekend plumbing, Saturday plumbing, 24 hour plumbing service, emergency plumbing could be described by that ad copy.

So, the next question is, would you rather split up those even further? The ad copy describes both emergency plumbing and weekend plumbing. Maybe a better ad copy would be:

Weekend Plumbing Services
Don’t pay high weekend rates!
We work all day, every day.

In this example, suddenly this ad copy only describes the keywords: weekend plumbing and Saturday plumbing; which makes it a much more targeted ad. (Learn more about title and description writing).

It is better to have 100 Ad Groups with 10 keywords each than 10 Ad Groups with 100 keywords each. When ad copy accurately reflects a keyword, one usually has a higher CTR and can send keywords to more targeted landing pages.

Take a look through your campaigns and think about these questions:

Do you have generic ads that are trying to describe hundreds of keywords?
Are your ads extremely targeted towards your keywords?
Do the ads express a single user intent?
Do the ads call for a single user action?
Are you split testing offers?

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Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Blog, PPC Info

Comments

3 Responses to “How to Organize Keywords into Ad Groups”

adLabs “Keyword Group Detector” » bgtheory.com on February 25th, 2007 6:05 pm

[...] first step to good keyword organization is to identify your ad groups. Microsoft’s adLabs has a nice tool in helping to first [...]
Google AdWords Quality Score Factors Demystified » bgtheory.com on April 3rd, 2007 9:01 am

[...] closely does your ad copy reflect your keywords? Ad Group organization is key to starting this process. Your ad copy should describe each keyword in the ad group. Each [...]
What determines the ‘Ad Group Quality Scoreâ€™ for AdWords? » bgtheory.com on April 5th, 2007 6:48 am

[...] So, the absolute first key is ensuring the proper ads are served is making sure your ad groups are well organized. [...]