It’s All Relative

Since CPC prices are often closely linked to the potential profitability of a sale from that keyword, the CPC price is often a mute point. A ‘bad credit history remortgage’ could be worth $15,000 profit to a remortgage broker, so having CPCs in excess of $50.00 can deliver a strong return on investment.

On the other hand, the keyword ‘New York weather’ has little commercial intention, so keywords such as this tend to benefit from low CPCs.

While this relativity of CPC prices makes CPC comparisons across sectors rather meaningless, most PPC advertisers would jump at the chance to pay lower CPCs. So below are 4 strategies I’ve found useful for achieving lower CPCs, while still maintaining a strong conversion rate.

Source: Wordstream

1. Use Long Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are those highly-specific, infrequently searched-for phrases such as ‘all inclusive holidays to Paris from Sydney’, which turn up in your search query report. Since they tend to have less advertiser competition, they can be considerably cheaper than more generic keywords such as ‘Paris holidays’.

What’s more, since people making long-tail searchers have arguably carried out the large majority of their pre-purchase research, and are often further along in the buying cycle, long-tail searches can have a considerably higher conversion rate.

Cheaper CPCs and higher conversion rates were exactly what I found when analysing search queries containing different numbers of words. Searches containing 4 or more words performed consistently better than searches containing fewer than 4 words.

Recommendations:

• Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research keywords which have approximately 100 searches/month. These tend to get overlooked by a large number of PPC advertisers.
• Take advantage of the ‘more like these’ feature in Google’s Keyword Tool to continue to build your list of long-tail keywords.
• Run a search query report to look at the search queries which get matched to your keywords. If they are relevant, and have a decent click volume, add them as new keywords and give them their own tailored ads. This way, instead of long-tail searches being matched to your more generic keywords, they will now be matched to longer keywords, giving you more control over ad messages and bid optimisation.

2. Research Uncompetitive Themes

Keywords which have less competition often have lower CPCs. Finding keyword with less competition often requires you to think outside the box, although with the right tools and approach you can be diversifying your keyword portfolio in no time.

Recommendations:

• Plug the URL of a competitor’s website into Google’s Keyword Tool and see what comes up. If their products and services are worded differently to yours, it can uncover some previously-overlooked terminology.
• Mine your search query report to uncover themes which you previously overlooked. Don’t worry if a search query has only a handful of clicks –you’re trying to research new themes from searches which have matched to your existing keywords, so click volumes would likely be much greater if they are added as new keywords.
• Look for numbers which frequently crop up in your search query report. If you’re selling holidays, consider how people type the dates into their search, such as ‘France holidays December 2011′, or ‘winter 2012 skiing deals Queenstown’. If you can provide tailored ads which cater for these date searches, you will likely receive high click through rates (CTR), high Quality Scores, and low CPCs.
• Use Google Insights for Search to find breakout searches. These are searches which have recently increased in popularity by at least 400%, and can be excellent opportunities for highly-profitable keyword targeting due to their relatively low competition and relatively low CPCs.
• Ask friends or family how they might search for your products and services.

3. Use Modified Broad Match

Modified Broad Match is a variation of broad match, but allows you greater control over the types of search queries which trigger your ads. By placing a plus (+) sign in front of certain words in your keyword, Google will only match your keyword to searches which contain all of the words with a preceding plus sign.

So if your keyword was ‘+cheap +deals to +Rome’, you can be sure than any searches matching to your keyword must contain the words ‘cheap’, ‘deals’, and ‘Rome’.

Modified broad match is a great way to improve the quality and profitability from your AdWords campaigns. In some recent research I carried out on modified broad match keywords, keywords with a greater amount of broad match modification tended to have considerably higher CTRs and significantly lower CPCs.

Recommendations:

• Take advantage of modified broad match. It allows you greater control over the types of searches which trigger your keywords.
• Be mindful that restricting the match types of your keywords may reduce your click volume, so compensate for this by researching additional keywords and themes.
• Broad match generation can also be a useful tool to allow your more generic non-modified broad match keywords to catch relevant search traffic which have not yet been added as modified broad match keyword.

4. Be Relevant

Despite PPC often being dubbed as saturated and highly-competitive, the truth is there are massive opportunities everywhere for PPC advertisers to achieve high profitability by providing highly-relevant and helpful ads, which engage with their target audience.

Searches on Google are now becoming increasingly diverse, complex, and unique, and users are expecting a higher degree of relevancy and helpfulness from search results. If you can be the advertiser which caters for the specific needs and requirements of searchers, visitors will reward you with their wallets. And since click through rate (CTR) is a large component of Quality Score, if you can achieve a high CTR, low CPCs will naturally follow.

Recommendations:

• Create hundreds of highly-granular ad groups, each containing only a handful of very similar keywords.
• Tailor your ad messages to your ad group’s keywords. If the ad group contains keywords related to ‘Winter 2012 Queenstown holidays’, ensure your ads also mention cater for Queenstown holidays in Winter 2012.
• Run an ad group report and find your ad groups which receive a large number of clicks. Changes are those ad groups are being matched to a large number of very different searches, so could benefit from being split out. The 10% Clicks Rule is a useful tool for quickly and efficiently identifying your ad groups which could benefit from being split out. Follow the 3 part guide for step-by-step instructions of how to do this.
• Examine your ad groups with high CPCs and low CTRs. Consider how closely your search queries match to that ad group’s ads. If a gap exists between the ad group’s searches and the ad group’s ads, consider how you can make changes to boost your relevancy.

Return on Investment is the Goal

Quality Score doesn’t sell anything. Click through rate doesn’t sell anything. CPCs don’t sell anything. Improving these metrics should not be the objective of your campaign. Improving ROI should be.

All other things equal, if you reduce your CPCs by 20%, great!

But are all other things equal? In trying to reduce your CPCs, have your sacrificed volume? Have you sacrificed quality? Are paying lower CPCs simply because visitors are now less relevant and less likely to convert? Are you now missing out on more relevant and potentially more profitable searches?

CPCs or Quality Score or CTR should not be the end goal of your PPC campaign. Return on investment should be. There’s no harm in paying 50% higher CPCs if your profit increases by 60%. So only use CPCs as a guide.

By all means use long-tail keywords, search query reports, and modified broad match as a means to lower your CPCs. But make sure your sales volume and ROI also rises as a result.

Alan Mitchell is a Google AdWords certified PPC specialist based in Melbourne, Australia, with over 4 years running successful PPC campaigns for businesses in Australia and overseas. Find out how the specialist PPC management such as the 4 PPC strategies above can help you improve your return on investment from PPC marketing, or get in touch for more information.

But while ad scheduling in Google AdWords can be extremely powerful in boosting campaign performance, it is essential that ad scheduling decisions are reliable and informed. Since so many internal and external factors can bias your day of the week analysis, advanced ad scheduling strategies are best reserved for mature and relatively stable PPC campaigns with a large amount of conversion data.

Below are three tips for getting the most out of ad scheduling, and suggestions to help you make reliable and informed decisions to take advantage of this powerful feature of Google AdWords.

1. Beware of Diluted Data

You’re dividing your conversion data across 7 days, so each day will considerably less data than if you look at your campaign on the whole. Keep this in mind, and avoid jumping to conclusions based on insufficient data.

Recommendations: If you’re identified Friday as being a high-performing day, only make slight adjustments to your ad scheduling. Just because Friday has worked better than Saturday does not mean Friday should have bids 100% higher than Saturday. Exaggerated changes to ad scheduling can turn an otherwise high-performing campaign into a poor-performing one.

2. Look for Trends

Avoid getting caught up in the detail. You’re right – Wednesday did perform better than Thursday, but is it really significant? A handful fewer sales on Wednesday and a handful more on Thursday would result in both days performing exactly the same.

Recommendations: Take a step back and look for more general and reliable insights. It is clear that Mondays – Fridays performed much better than Saturdays and Sundays, so make that your only finding from your analysis. Trying to distinguish between individual days where performance is so similar is unnecessarily complicating and confusing your ad scheduling strategy.

3. The Past is Not the Future

Just because Saturdays and Sundays have performed poorly in the past, and Thursdays have performed well, does not mean they will continue to do so in the future. Perhaps a PR campaign caused a sudden increase in sales one Thursday which is biasing the results? Perhaps you tested some new high-volume keywords one weekend which were paused after the weekend due to few sales?

Recommendations: Where possible, repeat your analysis using different date ranges, to see if your findings are recreated. If certain days consistently and significantly outperform other days across different periods, then feel free to incorporate that into your ad scheduling. But avoid making changes to ad scheduling if too many external factors could have influenced day of week performance.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Ad scheduling can be extremely useful for mature PPC campaigns which have benefited from a steady period of ad visibility, with limited changes to keywords, bids, ads, and landing pages. If a PPC campaign is in its early growth phrase, where multiple testings and optimisations make reliable day of week analysis difficult, keep day of week analysis for another time.

Does ad scheduling help you boost PPC profitability? Do weekdays consistently perform better than weekends? Share your thoughts and comments below.

But after a while, you realise your PPC campaigns are not delivering the desired return on investment. You start making changes to bids, budgets, and keywords. Still no improvement, so you make more changes.

And so on.

It’s not long until you’ve lost track of what’s working and what’s not. Your keywords and ad groups become disorganised, your Quality Scores start to fall, and you start paying excessively high CPCs to chase after visitors and sales.

If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps you need to take a step back and review your campaign optimisation strategy. Are you making intelligent and informed decisions based on reliable, insightful, and unbiased data? Or are your bids being changed and keywords paused in a random and haphazard fashion in a drastic effort to improve results?

Below are 5 optimisation mistakes I’ve found myself guilty of from time to time, and some tips on how to avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Basing decisions on too little data

Data is a PPC advertiser’s best friend. Without knowing which keywords, ads, and landing pages perform better than other keywords, ads, and landing pages, it is almost impossible to create and maintain a profitable PPC campaign. But when assessing the performance of your campaigns, it’s all too easy to make uninformed changes to keyword bids and unnecessarily pause keywords and ads based on insignificant and unreliable data.

A keyword which has received 1 click and delivered 1 sale is not a high performing keyword. Similarly, a keyword which has received 50 clicks and delivered no sales is not a poor performing keyword.

Recommendations:

• 200 clicks is a good rule of thumb – it gives the keyword or ad a fair chance to show its true worth, and any freak anomalies are likely to be cancelled out over a decent-sized data set. So avoid writing off keywords and ads with less than 200 clicks
• Use larger data sets, but keep track of the time ranges used during your analyses (point 4)

2. Being too granular

Another common mistake is placing too much emphasis on the performance of individual keywords and individual ads, and failing to see the bigger picture. If you look at only keyword data, you will fail to spot how each of your ad groups and campaigns are performing.

Recommendations:

• If your individual keyword data is too small, look at your ad group data – you’re sure to uncover greater insights. And if you ad group data is too small, look at your campaign data.
• Same with ads. If you have the same ad messages across multiple ad groups, run a pivot table in Excel to benefit from a larger data set
• Try to only make optimisation changes when you have at least 200 clicks, so keep moving up a level until you have enough data set to make informed decisions – any changes you make will them be more likely to have a positive impact on your account performance.

3. Assuming that just because a keyword or search query has converted in the past, it will convert again in the future

Because it won’t. Well, not always anyway.

People make a wide range of unique searches, so just because you made a sale after someone searched for ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′, does not mean that bidding on the keyword ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′ will deliver another sale in the future.

Recommendations:

• Try to view your more obscure long-tail keywords as a whole, rather than individually
• Pick out themes from your search query reports to get more insightful understanding on what types of keywords and searches are working, rather than the individual searches and keywords

4. Optimising the same data twice

One of the easiest yet most dangerous mistakes to make when optimising campaigns regularly is to overlap your date ranges. You’ve selected data for the ‘last 30 days’, made your keyword bid changes, then carry out another bid optimisation 2 weeks later, again using the ‘last 30 days’ of data. Your bidding decisions will be based on overlapping data, so your changes will be made with poor judgement.

Similarly, if you’ve changed bids in the middle of the month, but then view data for the whole of the month, your CPC, CTR, and average position data will not be representative of the current state of the campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Record the date you make changes to your campaigns, and view data from that date onwards – it will then be more representative of the current state of the campaigns
• Download campaign statistics using AdWords Editor – when you come back to optimise your campaigns on a later date, you can see what date range was previously used and select a new date range from that date onwards
• Try to make routine changes such as bid adjustments at the same time each week or month, to get in the habit of selecting reliable date ranges (e.g. ‘last 7 days’)

5. Being afraid to walk away

There’s nothing more frustrating than investing huge amounts of time and effort into carrying out detailed analysis on your campaigns, only to find no findings whatsoever. After carefully compiling results to compare the profitability of prices versus non-prices in ads, or compare visitor engagement and returning visits of landing page A to landing page B, you secretly hope one proves to be a clear winner.

Really, you do.

But all too often, different ad messages and landing pages will perform exactly the same. When faced with such inconclusive and frustrating results, it’s often difficult to walk away and make absolutely no changes whatsoever to your campaigns. Despite the difficulty in doing so, walking away is essential to avoid making unnecessary and often detrimental changes to your campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Realise that making changes based on insignificant data can worsen your campaign performance
• Create two identical copies of each ad style within the same ad group, and let them rotate – only if both ads AA clearly beat both ads BB (or vice versa), can you be confident of a clear winner

Less is sometimes more

PPC campaign optimisation is an art. Especially when you want to include engagement metrics such as time on site and returning visits. Changes to keywords and ads should not be made haphazardly – they should only be made after careful thought and analysis, using reliable and significant data sets.

Not only does efficient and informed PPC optimisation require a good understanding of data analysis, but it also requires a good intuition and experience on when to make changes and when to walk away. Sometimes the best work you can do to a PPC campaign is to do no work at all.

What strategies do you find useful for optimising PPC campaigns? How do you ensure your optimisations are reliable and efficient? Share your comments and suggestions below.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive rule on the types of keywords which are relevant (which you should show your ads), and which are  not relevant (which you should avoid). After all, what’s relevant to a large advertiser may be irrelevant to a small niche advertiser. This lack of a boundary can make it extremely difficult to decide where to draw the line when researching possible keywords.

But as long as you consider the principle of keyword qualification, everything will be fine! If you understand how different keywords in your AdWords account naturally have different levels of qualification, keyword research and ad group organisation become a whole lot more effective.

Let’s see how.

Suppose you want to sell your luxury apartment in Melbourne. What keywords should you target? Perhaps you might want to show ads for the phrase ‘luxury apartments in Melbourne’? But people making this search might be looking for luxury rental apartments in Melbourne, and you’re obviously only concerned with apartment sales.

So you might want to instead target the phrase ‘luxury apartments for sale in Melbourne’. This would no doubt be a highly-relevant keyword, and surely deliver ideal visitors to your site. And you’d be right – the keyword is qualified on four separate counts:

• It contains the word ‘luxury’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for high-end property
• It contains the word ‘apartments’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments rather than houses or offices
• It contains the words ‘for sale’ – qualifying the visitor as looking to purchase, rather than rent
• It contains the word ‘Melbourne’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments in Melbourne, rather than Sydney

But highly-relevant as this keyword may be, search volume may be very limited. If you only target keywords which are fully-qualified by description, type, purchase intention, and location, you might as well give up hope of ever selling your luxury Melbourne apartment. Only 38 people searched for ‘luxury apartments for sale Melbourne’ in March 2011, so even with a strong click through rate (CTR) of 10%, you would only receive a handful of visitors to your site each month. There just isn’t the search volume to focus only on the most highly-qualified keywords.

So let’s get more visitors!

The Art of Qualification

In order to open up your property to a greater visitor base, you need to be less strict with your keyword qualification. While it is of course great to have only highly-qualified visitors clicking through to your site, to increase the reach of your property, you will also need to target slightly less-qualified keywords.

But while targeting these less-qualified keywords may increase your risk of getting irrelevant visitors to your site, this can be minimised by intelligent separation of different types of keywords.

To see how your keyword can be separated, let’s once again consider the multiple ways in which a property keyword can be qualified:

1. Description – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘luxury’, ‘world class’, ‘spacious’, or ‘waterfront’, rather than ‘cheap’, ‘first home’ or ‘small’
2. Type – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘apartments’, rather than ‘houses’, ‘land’, or ‘offices’
3. Purchase Intention – the searcher has specified ‘buy’, or ‘for sale’ in their search, rather than ‘rental’, ‘hire’, or ‘for party’
4. Location – the searcher has specified they are looking for property in ‘Melbourne’ or ‘St Kilda’ (a suburb of Melbourne), rather than ‘Paris’ or New York’

Your most highly-qualified keywords would contain all four qualifiers, such as:

• world class Melbourne apartments for sale (1234)
• buy waterfront apartment in Melbourne (1234)
• exclusive Melbourne apartment sales (1234)

But to increase the reach of your website, you might also want to target keywords which do not include a description qualifier, such as:

• Melbourne apartments for sale (234)
• buy Melbourne apartment online (234)
• apartments for sale in Melbourne (234)

Or keywords which don’t mention the words ‘for sale’:

• Melbourne waterfront apartments (124)
• luxury apartments in Melbourne (124)
• spacious Melbourne apartment units (124)

Heck, why not even target keywords which don’t mention a location. You could always geo-target your ads:

• world class apartments for sale (123)
• apartments for sale over $1 million (123)

But why stop there. We could also target even less-qualified keywords:

• luxury apartments (12)
• apartments for sale (23)
• apartments in Melbourne (24)

And if we really wanted traffic, we could take it even further:

• apartments (2)

As you can see, as we select keywords which are slightly less qualified, they become vaguer, and it becomes more difficult to determine the searcher’s requirements.

So where do you stop?

I would suggest somewhere before you start broad-matching to ‘apartments’, but it is entirely up to you. However far you decide to take your keyword research, what’s important is to keep different types of keywords separate.

The Art of Separation

Your keyword ‘waterfront Melbourne apartments for sale’ will no doubt perform extremely differently to your keyword ‘apartments for sale’ or ‘Melbourne apartments’. Of course it would! So why should you mix different types of keywords together?

You shouldn’t.

Keep your different types of keywords separate, and tag your ads group names based on their amount of qualification:

• 1234 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 123 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale
• 124 | Waterfront | Apartments | Melbourne
• 12 | Waterfront | Apartments
• 234 | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 23 | Apartments | for Sale
• 24 | Apartments | Melbourne

By keeping your different qualified keywords separate, you can:

• Create different ads based on the qualification of the ad group’s keywords (if the keyword does not mention a location, then perhaps you should mention the location in your ads)
• Set different bids and budgets based on the level of keyword qualification (you might want to bid higher for highly-qualified 1234 keywords, and bid much lower for less-qualified 23 and 24 keywords)
• See at a glance how your different types of keywords are performing, and adjust your bids and budgets accordingly
• Have a logical pecking order depending on how your campaign is performing (your high-priority 1234 keywords might always be showing, with your low-priority 23 and 24 keywords turned on and off depending on desired visitor volume)
• Use negative keywords more intelligently depending on the ad group’s keyword qualification
• Have a clear keyword ad group organisation strategy to help with future keyword expansion

Since your highly-qualified keywords will no doubt perform very differently to your less-qualified keywords, it makes complete sense to keep them separate. Try researching and organising your keywords based on the amount of qualification they contain, and you see if your campaigns don’t improve.

How do you like to organise your keywords and ad groups? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia improve their return on investment through best practice PPC techniques. To find out how strategic keyword qualification can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

While this extra degree of control was largely welcomed by PPC advertisers, modified broad match no doubt adds an extra degree of complication to Google AdWords management. However, as we will see from four seperate modified broad match experiments, if modified broad match is used correctly, it can be extremely effective in significantly increasing click through rates (CTR) and lowering cost per click (CPC) prices of Google AdWords campaigns.

Infinite Matching Possibilities

Modified broad match isn’t just the fourth match type. Modified broad match is the infinite match type. Whereas previously it was only possible to match a keyword in three possible ways, with modified broad match it is now possible to potentially match a keyword an infinite number of ways. The only limit to the number of matching possibilities using modified broad match is the length of the keyword itself.

Say you wanted to bid on the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’. Previously there were only three possible ways you could match this keyword – exact, phrase, and broad:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match

Now, with modified broad match, adding plus signs in front of certain words in your keyword forces those words to be included in the search query. As any word with a preceding plus sign must be included somewhere within the user’s search query, it is now possible to better control the relevancy of PPC traffic. However, this extra control means more possible customisation – there are now a 10 possible matching combinations for the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match
4. +cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
5. +cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
6. +cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
7. cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
8. +cheap hotels melbourne – modified broad match
9. cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
10. cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match

That’s 10 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 3 words, 18 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 4 words, and 34 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 5 words. It doesn’t take long to realise that modified broad match creates a huge number of possible matching combinations – each which triggers its own unique range of search queries.

While these numerous matching possibilities no doubt add extra complication to Google AdWords management, if modified broad match is approached strategically it can be hugely effective in improving Google AdWords campaign performance. Over the course of 4 AdWords campaign experiments on modified broad match, we will see how modified broad match can lead to significant increases in click through rate, while at the same time significantly reducing cost per click prices.

Experiment 1 – Four Keywords

Firstly, let’s look at a small-scale test which was carried out on an AdWords account over the last 2 months. Below are results for a hotel name keyword (broad match), along with 3 modified broad match variations. Each of the 4 keyword combinations were given their own ad group, the same ads, and the same keyword bids. Over the 2 month test period, each keyword combination received over 200 clicks.

While quality score, average position and average cost per click prices were very similar for each of the combinations, click through rate and conversion rate were significantly higher for longer keywords and those with a greater degree of broad match modification. Click through rate rose from 1.36% to 2.99% to 3.81% to 4.65% as the keyword increased in broad match modification, while conversion rate similarly rose from 3.03% to 3.17% to 4.13% to 4.23%.

Although the experiment was on a small scale using only a handful of keywords, and there could potentially be multiple causes of uncontrolled bias which could have influenced the results, the findings strongly suggest that longer keywords with a higher degree of broad match modification achieve better results than shorter keywords with little or no broad match modification. Considering that longer, modified keywords are more specific in their nature, this is hardly surprising.

Experiment 2 – Multiple Keywords

To provide a more comprehensive analysis of the performance of modified broad match, modified broad match was rolled out across two separate test accounts. Again, the testing time period was just over 2 months, and each test account received over 2,000 clicks. While different keywords had different bids, largely due to their differing levels of competition, care was taken to ensure each match type variation of the same keyword had the same bid.

In test account 1, exact match performed significantly better than the other match types in terms of click through rate (CTR). Phrase, broad and modified broad match had similar click through rates, although average cost per click prices were much lower for phrase match keywords. Although there was little difference in CTR between broad and modified broad match, modified broad match had a 10% lower average cost per click, and a Quality Score comparable to exact match.

In test account 2, however, the story was much more conclusive. Exact match was this time the worst performing match type in terms of click through rate, while Quality Score of exact match was considerably lower than the other match types. Modified broad match had a higher click through rate than standard broad math, although average cost per click prices were slightly higher. However, once again, modified broad match boasted the highest Quality Score, suggesting that modified broad match keywords were perceived as highly relevant for the searches they triggered.

While both test accounts provided results which were largely promising for advocates of modified broad match, the differences in match type performance between the two accounts suggest a more investigative analysis is needed.

Experiment 3 – Amount of Modification in Keyword

In experiment 1 we found that although the sample size was small, keywords with more broad match modification tended to perform better than keywords with less broad match modification. To test the accuracy of this finding, keywords across the two test accounts were grouped according to the number of plus signs they contained. A keyword which contained 4 plus signs for example, meant that those 4 words must be included somewhere within the user’s search query.

Once again, account 1 provided little evidence that more broad match modification resulted in higher click through rates. Although click through rates increased for keywords with 4 or 5 modified words, click volume was significantly lower for these longer words, making it hard to provide a conclusive result. Cost per click (CPC) prices, however, were more conclusive, with CPC prices falling steadily as the amount of broad match modification increases.

In test account 2, not only did cost per click prices fall for keywords with more broad match modification, but click through rate showed a more convincing trend. Quality Scores remained relatively similar across all keyword groups.

Although the results reflect favourably on the use of modified broad match, with keywords having more plus signs generally performing better than those with less plus signs, the results do not take into account the number of words in the keywords which were not broad math modified.

Experiment 4 – Amount of Modification vs. Non-Modification in Keyword

To assess the performance of keywords with differing number of modified and non-modified words, keywords were grouped according to the number of words they contained vs. the number of which were modified. A keyword such as +cheap +hotels melbourne +4 +star, for example, contains 5 words, of which 4 words were broad match modified.

The results show that keywords with a high percentage of their words broad match modified had click through rates considerably higher than keywords where only a few (or none) of their words were broad match modified. While longer keywords also performed better than shorter keywords in terms of click through rate, as expected from long-tail theory, keywords with a higher number of broad match modified words tended to have a higher click through rate.

Similarly, keywords with a greater amount of broad match modification tended to have lower cost per click prices. Keywords with 0 or 1 plus sign were generally expensive while keywords with 3 or 4 plus signs were considerably cheaper.

Although Quality Score was higher for keywords containing a greater number of words, Quality Score remained relatively constant for keywords of varying broad match modification. Quality Score, however, was relatively high across all keywords, suggesting a strong degree of relevancy across the campaigns.

Conclusion

Although exact match was found to perform very well, modified broad match outperformed phrase match and standard broad match in both test accounts. Looking at keywords with different amounts of broad match modification, the results suggest that broad match modification can be incredibly useful in increasingly click through rates and reducing average cost per click prices for Google AdWords campaigns. While keywords containing a greater number of words will naturally tend to achieve higher click through rates and lower cost per click prices, as expected from long-tail theory, the findings suggest that incorporating modified broad match into your long-tail strategy can provide superior results on keywords of all word lengths.

While modified broad match presents a great opportunity for PPC advertisers to improve the performance of their campaigns, it also allows advertisers to increase their control over the types of search queries which match each of their keywords. If modified broad match is rolled out strategically and methodically, with highly-tailored ads closely matching the keywords in each ad group, there is no reason why modified broad match can’t be a stepping stone towards even greater results.

How have you found modified broad match? Did you see similar results in CTR and CPCs? Did modified broad match affect your conversion rates? Share your thoughts and experiences on modified broad match below.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how a strategic approach to modified broad match can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

While exact and phrase match keywords are generally more controllable than broad match keywords, broad match can open up your business to a significant number of additional customers – those who might otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

As we consider the pros and cons of each match type, we find that a balance is therefore required between the extra visitors broad match can deliver, and the quality of those extra visitors. In trying to find that balance, we consider a technique called the Broad Match Generator, which uses broad match search queries to generate new exact, phrase and negative keywords. We see how the methodical process of regularly analysing  search query data, to continually expand keyword lists and ad text relevancy (Broad Match Generation), can help take advantage of the opportunities of broad match while still delivering a strong return on investment.

Exact & Phrase Match

Exact and phrase match keywords are typically the most favourable for search marketers, as they allow a high degree of control over the words a searcher has to make in order for their ads to be shown. If your campaign contained the exact match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, you can be 100% sure your ad would only appear when someone searches for ‘flights to Melbourne’ exactly.

Phrase match also gives you a high degree of control, and ensures that the words ‘flights to Melbourne’ must be included somewhere in the user’s search phrase. You can therefore be 100% sure you will only receive traffic from searches which include the phrase ‘flights to Melbourne’, such as ‘cheap flights to Melbourne’, ‘flights to Melbourne from Hong Kong’ or ‘low cost flights to Melbourne from China’.

So with exact and phrase match, you have a high degree of control over the search words which will trigger your ads. You can ensure your ads will only be shown on Google for highly-relevant potential customers.

Broad Match

Broad match, however, is not so controllable. Bid for the broad match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, and you ads could be shown when someone searches for ‘flights from London to Melbourne’, ‘Melbourne flying club’ or ‘Australian travel deals’. Basically any search term Google believes is somewhat relevant to the keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’.

Not very controllable, you might think, and you’d be right. Why would you risk receiving visitors from people looking for ‘Melbourne flying lessons’, when you can be 100% sure what you’re getting by using exact and phrase matching?

Traffic, stupid!

Broad match isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be incredibly useful. According to Udi Manber, Google’s VP of engineering, 20-25% of search queries each day have never been made before, making it almost impossible to target every potential customer using just exact and phrase match keywords.

No amount of keyword research can predict that someone might search for phrases such as ‘flight prices March 2011 Tokyo to Melbourne’, ‘airlines Melbourne business class from NZ’ or ‘flights around the world via Melbourne’. Broad match can help deliver thousands of additional highly-targeted potential customers, who would otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

So broad match allows you to receive high-quality visitors from search terms you may have missed during your initial keyword research.

But the problem of broad match still remains. Broad match can still send you visitors from hundreds of irrelevant terms such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’. What a waste of money.

A balance is therefore needed between the benefit of extra visitors from broad match keywords, and the relevancy of those extra visitors. Introducing the Broad Match Generator…

The Broad Match Generator

Since exact and phrase match keywords provide the highest level of control, and allow advertisers to display highly-targeted ads, exact and phrase match searches should account for the bulk of clicks in a paid search campaign. Broad match should only be used as a catch all, to pick up those specific, seasonal and somewhat abstract long-tail searches which were not added as exact or phrase match keywords during your initial keyword research, and as a tool to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords.

To see how this Broad Match Generator would work, let’s first look at an example of an excellent user journey.

Example 1 – Exact Match Keyword in Account

Suppose someone searched for ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’. Also suppose ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ exists as an exact match keyword in your Google AdWords account. So when a search is made, your exact match keyword ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ is triggered. Not only that, but since the keyword has its own ad group with its own tailored ads, your ad which appears will be highly-relevant and mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Melbourne’ and ‘Italy’, as well as current pricings for the trip. The visitor is then taken through to a landing page which shows details of flights to Italy from Melbourne.

Highly relevant, highly engaging, and likely to result in high click through rate (CTR), high Quality Score, low cost per click prices (CPCs), low bounce rate, high conversion rate and higher return on investment. Fantastic!

Example 2 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is relevant)

Now let’s see what would happen if a search is matched to one of your broad keywords.

Suppose the search is ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, and ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’ is not is your Google AdWords account as an exact match keyword (ignore phrase match for the moment). The search is then matched to your broad keyword ‘Melbourne flights’, and the generic ad for ‘Melbourne flights’ is triggered. The visitor is then taken through to a generic landing page.

Somewhat relevant, you might think, but far from perfect. The searcher explicitly stated they were looking for flights at Christmas 2010, so why not show ads which better answers their question?

This is where the Generator comes in.

For any broad-matched search query, first decide if it is relevant. If it is relevant, then add the search as a new exact and phrase match keyword and give the keywords its own highly-targeted ads in its own ad group.

So the next time someone searches for ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, your ad which will appear will mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Christmas’, ’2010′ and ‘Melbourne’, and take visitors directly through to a Christmas 2010 Melbourne flight page.

Higher click through rate (CTR), higher Quality Score, lower cost per click prices (CPCs), lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Example 3 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is not relevant)

But what if the search query is not relevant, such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’?

Again, this is easy. When you find a search query which is not relevant to your business, add it (and similar irrelevant searches such as ‘instructor’, ‘jobs’ and ‘careers’) as a negative keyword, to prevent it (and similar irrelevant searches) from triggering your ads again in the future.

The result will be reduced wastage, lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Two Simple Steps to Ultimate Broad Match Generation

The Broad Match Generation process is very simple. On a regular basis, simply look at each of the search queries that have matched to your broad-match keywords, and make one of two improvements:

1. If the broad-match search query is relevant, add the search query as exact and phrase match keywords in their own ad group, with their own tailored ads.
2. If the broad-match search query is not relevant, add the search query as a negative keyword.

Remember, even as you add new exact, phrase and negative keywords, your broad match keywords will continue to match to more and more search terms, so Broad Match Generation is an ongoing process. However, as you increase your number of exact and phrase match keywords, you should see broad match accounting for fewer and fewer of your visitors. A higher proportion of visitors coming through exact and phrase match keywords means you’re more in control of the types of visitors coming to your site and the ads they are shown, and is a sign that your Broad Match Generation is working.

If the Broad Match Generator is carried out regularly, broad match can be extremely effective in helping to target your ads to an increasing number of highly-qualified searchers, while at the same time reducing wastage from irrelevant and wasteful searches.

Broad match should never be used as a long-term ‘set and forget’ keyword targeting strategy; instead, it should only be used to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords, and improve the relevancy of your ads. It should only be used as a means to an end – that end being more exact, phrase and negative keywords and better relevancy.

Broad match keywords, left alone, should never be a long-term solution.

Opportunities

As we have seen, ongoing Broad Match Generation is a great way to make use of the extra traffic available through broad match, while at the same time providing a simple and practical means to continually improve the quality of your Google AdWords campaigns. It can help you uncover new seasonal trends and long-tail opportunities (such as ‘Christmas flights to Melbourne’ and ‘flight and hotel packages Melbourne Cup 2011′), and provide you with a great opportunity to provide highly-relevant ads, tailored to these new search terms.

What’s more, since there will also be some difference between your phrase match keywords and the search queries being matched to them, phrase match also presents another great opportunity for similar ongoing refinement. Looking at the searches being matched to your phrase match keywords, and adding new exact, phrase and negative keywords, as well as new tailored ads, can help take your Google AdWords campaigns even further.

And although Google’s recently-announced broad match modifier will help to give you more control over the types of searches being matched to your broad match keywords, ongoing Broad Match Generation will still be an incredibly powerful strategy – not only to help expand your list of long-tail keywords, but also to identify seasonal keywords trends and improve the relevancy of your ads.

Broad Match Generation provides a practical means to continually provide ever more specific and relevant ads to help better cater for the growing demands of searchers and better connect with your target audience. Use it to your advantage and watch how your return on investment from Google AdWords improves.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how the strategic use of exact, phrase and broad match can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

Sometimes, if conversion data is scarce, click-through-rate (CTR) is instead used to evaluate a keyword’s performance. If a keyword generates only 5 clicks from 1,000 impressions, it has a CTR of 0.5% so is deemed irrelevant. The keyword is then paused or relegated to the second page of search result obscurity.

This is not the right approach.

Beyond the Click

There is more to paid search management than optimising keywords based only on conversion rates and click-through-rates. A more intelligent approach also considers what happens once a user clicks on your ad:

• How many pages are they viewing?
• How long are they spending on your site?
• How many people are immediately bouncing?
• How many people are returning at a later date?

If a keyword has a poor conversion rate and a poor click through rate, but people are viewing a large number of pages, spending a long time on your site and returning regularly, the keyword may be doing a great job at creating awareness of your products or services. Even though conversion rate may be low, the keyword may not deserve to be paused or have its bid reduced – instead it may be beneficial to increase its bid to allow the keyword to flourish and user engagement to increase.

Similarly, if a keyword is converting well but 80% of people are immediately bouncing, finding out why – perhaps by looking at search queries being matched to the keyword – could help the keyword convert even better.

How to Optimise a Campaign Intelligently

Analytics software, such as Google Analytics, are incredibly useful in helping to understand what people do after they click on your ad and land on your site. If your Google Analytics account is linked to your Google AdWords account, it is possible to see page views, time on site and bounce rate for each of your AdWords campaigns, ad groups and keywords (select Traffic Sources > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns).

Once you’ve logged into Google Analytics, look at each of your campaigns:

• Which campaigns are engaging users with a high time spent on site? Why?
• Which campaigns are bringing in untargeted users who immediately bounce back and go elsewhere? Why?
• Which campaigns are persuading users to come back later? Why?

Next, drill down to ad group level and keywords level (if you have enough data) and ask yourself the same questions. 100 visits is usually significant to make reliable, informed decisions – but be careful about drawing conclusions for keywords / ad groups with less than 30 visits.

Make a note of those campaigns, ad groups and keywords which stand out, both positively and negatively. Look for common words that regularly appear in unusually high or unusually low metrics, such as ‘cheap’, ‘discount’ and ‘free’. How have they performed? Probably very different to your more generic keywords, you would imagine, but in what way?

Look for locations, product names and other qualifiers – can you notice any trends? Are there certain keywords with a high bounce rate? Could any negatives be added to reduce bounce rate?

Record any trends and resulting changes in a log. This is your insight on user engagement, and will not only help you develop a improved paid search campaign which will better connect with users, but will also help you better understand your audience and make more informed, strategic business decisions.

How to Optimise a Campaign Even More Intelligently

If you’re feeling more ambitious, export the keyword data to Excel and VLOOKUP each keyword’s Analytics performance to its AdWords performance (select Traffic Sources  > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns > “dimension” = “keywords” > export > CSV for Excel).

That way, when you’re looking at each keyword’s costs, CTR, conversions and ROI, you can also consider page views, time on site, returning visits and bounce rate, and better understand each keyword’s impact on creating awareness and interest.

Look at keyword 8 in the example below. It has a low conversion rate and a high cost per conversion, so based on conversion performance it should perhaps be paused. But notice how page views, time on site and bounce rate are all exceptionally good. Should the keyword really really be paused? It seems to be engaging users well, so why not instead find out why its conversion is so low?

Similarly, keyword 9 is converting well, but if it’s bounce rate could be reduced, it could become even more profitable. Play around with new ideas and experiment optimising bids based on different metrics.

It’s All About Engagement

The next time you optimise your campaign, remember there’s more to paid search management than conversions. If, like the majority of Americans, you’ve ever researched your next holiday, browsed that DVD player or shortlisted those birthday presents on your lunch break at work, only to buy online when you get home (on a different IP address), you will appreciate that keyword conversion data can only get you so far.

Conversion optimisation is naturally biased towards converting keywords, so will tend to ignore keywords at earlier stages of the buying cycle, which may play an essential role in creating awareness, generating interest and engaging users with your products, services and brand.

Conversion data – and automated tools which optimise keywords based on conversion data – are not the be all and end all of paid search management. Understanding user engagement could well be, and the tools to get you started are right at your fingertips.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how an analytical approach to PPC marketing can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

You may remember the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique to help identify the areas of your Google AdWords account which could benefit most from your time and effort (if not, you may want track back to Part 1: Overview and Part 2: Process).

What I want to do now is evaluate the rule using a real AdWords campaign data to assess its viability. Does it work? Does it help PPC management? Does it actually help improve results? Is 10% the right figure?

Example

Let’s start with the example I worked through in Part 2: Process.

As you may remember, we identified the ad groups which were receiving a large percentage of total broad and phrase-match clicks. In the example I used, 4 ad groups received at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks.I then suggested looking at the search queries for these ad groups.This gave me some great insight. Although search queries 54, 183, 55, 56 and 150 were relevant to my products and services, they were being broad matched to ad groups which were not relevant. Looking down the list, I found many similar examples of relevant searches being matched irrelevantly.

So I decided to create 16 new ad groups with 288 new keywords. Doing so gave me ideas of other new types of keywords, so I added them too, some in new ad groups. With these new keywords having their their own tailored ads, I could now be more sure than whenever someone searched for these search queries again, relevant ads would show.

Effects on click distribution

Let’s have a look at the before and after in terms of click distribution:

• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 17 fell from 22.8% to 12.4%
• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 27 fell from 15.8% to 11.3%
• Ad groups 30 and 26 dropped out of the top 5
• Ad group 36 (one of the new ad groups I added with new keyword ideas) moved into the top spot
• The number of ad groups receiving at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks fell from 4 last month to 3 this month
• The amount of broad and phrase clicks going to top 5 ads groups fell from 69% last month to 59% this month

(A more comprehensive comparison of ad group click percentages for both months can be found here).

So although most of last month’s ad groups are receiving a smaller share of broad and phrase clicks, one ad group (36) is now receiving more.

Not ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction. Next month, the search queries for ad group 36 can be analysed and split out into separate ad groups. If we repeat the process a few more times, what we’ll hopefully see is the broad and phrase click distribution spread over a greater number of ad groups.

Effects on actual results

Now let’s look at how overall AdWords results have changed:

• CTR increased by 22.5%
• Click volume increased by 43.2%
• CPCs stayed relatively constant (variation of $0.01)
• Average position of ads rose by 0.6
• Quality Score (weighted average) increased from 7.62 to 7.98
• Conversion rate increased by 33.8%

It seems like the improved ad group granularity, better tailoring of ads and 288 new keywords had a positive effect on CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate. Click volume also rose significantly for the same average CPC.

So great results all round.

More examples

We’ve only looked at one example so far. Let’s repeat the process for few more campaigns to see how the 10% Clicks Rule works on other campaigns.

Highlighted in red are the ad groups which are over 10% and could benefit from some insight.In examples 2 and 3, just looking at the search queries for these highlighted ad groups I found over 300 new keywords that could be added. Most were relevant to my products and services but were being matched irrelevantly.

Although examples 4 and 5 had fewer ad groups over 10%, just looking at the top ad groups helped me uncover some unnecessary broad-matching, suggesting maybe a ‘top 5 rule’ would be better to keep it relative.

Although no before and after results are yet available for these campaigns, it would be interesting to see how CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate improve over time with these ad group improvements.

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from all of this?

• The 10% Clicks Rule made it easy to identify ad groups where time and effort should be focused
• There is evidence to suggest he 10% Clicks Rule successfully helped spread the share of broad and phrase clicks across a greater number of ad groups
• There is evidence to suggest the 10% Clicks Rule helped significantly increase CTR, click volume, average position, Quality Score and conversion rate while keeping CPCs constant

So…if you are worried that too much of your traffic is being broad or phrase-matched, or worried that you are losing control over where your ads are being show, or just want to improve CTR, click volume and conversion rate, this technique could be for you.

I’m convinced of it’s use in helping to improve AdWords campaigns. I use it regularly and it really does help to quickly and easily get to the heart of broad and phrase matching. It saves sifting through mountains of data and becoming overwhelmed with analysis paralysis. That’s just me though – if you’ve tried it out for yourself and have any suggestions, good or bad, I’d love to hear your comments.

Happy optimising!

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

You may be familiar with a technique I shared in recent post called the 10% Clicks Rule (if not, you may want to come back once you’ve skimmed through Part 1: Overview). In essence, the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique that aims to improve the relevancy of ads for search queries which have broad or phrase-matched to one of you keywords. Since it is impractical to give every possible keyword or search query its own ad group with personalised ads, the 10% Clicks Rule helps to identify those ad groups which are most likely to benefit from your time and effort.

Part 1 was all theory. What I want to do now is provide a step-by-step guide explaining how to identify those ad groups in your own AdWords account which could greatly benefit from your insight. All we’re trying to do here is run a Google AdWords search query report at ad group level, filter out exact match keywords (to leave broad and phrase match only) and highlight those ad groups with more than 10% of broad and phrase clicks. These are the ad groups we want to look at. So if you’re a seasoned AdWords and Excel pro, feel free to skim through the bullets or jump ahead to Part 3: Does it Work?. For everyone else who might need a little more guidance, continue reading for a detailed step-by-step guide.

Download a search query report

• Log in to Google AdWords, go to the Report Centre and click ‘create a new report’
• Click ‘Search Query Performance’
• Select ‘ad group’ as the level of detail, ‘summary’ as the unit of time
• Select an appropriate date range
• Click ‘create report’, open it once it completes and export it to Excel

Pivot the data

Once we have the search query report in front of us, we want to summarise clicks by ad group.

• Delete anything above the campaigns/ad group/search query row so ‘campaigns’ is in cell A1
• Scroll to the bottom and delete the ‘totals and overall averages’ row
• Select all data and headings
• Go to Insert, click ‘PivotTable’, the ‘OK’
• This should create a new sheet

Calculate clicks by ad group

Next we want to filter out exact match clicks and calculate each ad group’s broad and phrase match click volume.

• Make sure you can see the ‘PivotTable Field List’ toolbar on the right-hand side (if you can’t, try clicking on the blank PivotTable or go to Options > Field List) – your sheet should now look like this
• Drag ‘ad group’ into the ‘row labels’ box – this should list all your ad groups in column 1
• Drag ‘clicks’ into the ‘values’ box and ensure it says ‘sum of clicks’ – this should show click totals in column 2
• Drag ‘Search Query Match Type’ into the ‘report filter’ box which should add a drop-down filter in cells A1 and A2 – your field list should now look like this
• Click the drop-down filter, click ‘select multiple items’ and ensure only broad, broad (session based) and phrase  are ticked – like this

Calculate percentages by ad group

You should now have a list of ad groups with totals of their broad and phrase clicks. Let’s now calculate each ad group’s percentage of total broad and phrase clicks.

• Scroll to the bottom and make a note of the ‘grand total’ number of broad and phrase clicks
• Click anywhere on the PivotTable to ensure it’s selected and click Options > Formulas > Calculated Field on the toolbar
• Type “Percentage” as the name
• Type “= Clicks / total_clicks” into the Formula box, where ‘total_clicks’ is your grand total of broad and phrase clicks you made a note of earlier
• Click OK – this should add a new column with each ad group’s percentage
• Ensure the ‘grand total’ of this new column equals 1
• Change the formatting so that each number reads as a percentage

Highlight high-volume ad groups

Now that we have percentages calculated for each ad group, make a note of those ad groups…

• Right-click anywhere in column 3, go to ‘Sort’ and select ‘Sort Largest to Smallest’
• Make a note of ad groups with more than 10% of clicks

These are the ad groups with a lot of broad-matching and phrase-matching going on. These are the ad groups that could benefit with your time and effort.

The fun part

You’ve now got everything you need to start make powerful changes to you AdWords account. You can stop here and use your own intuition to make improvements to these ad groups, or continue reading for some ideas and suggestions on what to do next.

Search query analysis

• Go back to your original search query report sheet so you can see all your search queries
• In the ‘ad group’ column, filter so that only the ad groups you made a note of earlier are ticked
• In the ‘Search Query Match Type’ column, filter so that only broad, broad (session) and phrase are ticked
• Sort the clicks largest to smallest

Your search query report should look something like this.

Take a moment to familiarise yourself with your search queries. People are typing these searches to find your products or services. You need to decide what action to take. For each of your search queries, you could either:

1. Add it as a negative keyword (if it’s not relevant)
2. Add it as a new keyword in its own ad group (if ads in that ad group are relevant)
3. Add it as a new keywords in a new ad group (if ads in that ad group are not relevant and new ads are needed)

First decide if any of the search queries are irrelevant to your business (option 1). Make a note of any irrelevant searches in a separate Excel sheet – you can add them as negative keywords later.

Great. Let’s now assume that all remaining searches are relevant to your business. You now need to decide between options 2 and 3 – whether to add the search query as a new keyword in that ad group, or in a new ad group.

To decide whether option 2 or 3 would work best, have a look at the ‘ad group’ column for the search query. It is this ad group the search query is being matched to. Open up AdWords Editor and now find that ad group. Look at the ads. These ads are being shown whenever someone searches for the search query. Are they relevant? Do they mention the search query in the heading or descriptions? Could they be improved in any way to increase relevancy, Quality Score, CTR and conversion rate?

If you think the ads are relevant to the search query, add the search as a new keyword to that ad group (option 2). If you think you could write better, more relevant ads for the search query, add the search query as a new keyword in a new ad group and write better ads for it (option 3).

Great rule, but does it work?

Hopefully if you’ve made it this far you’ve managed to have a go yourself and found some juicy ways to improve your AdWords campaign. While I hope you found it simple and straightforward to follow, feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

In the final part of the Clicks Rule trilogy, I look at real AdWords examples and explore how it can actually help improve results of AdWords campaigns. Part 3: Does It Work?

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

Here’s the theory

No more than 10% of total broad and phrase clicks in your Google AdWords account should come from a single ad group. If more than 10% of your total broad and phrase clicks comes from a single ad group, the keywords in that ad group are being over broad-matched or over phrase-matched. Too many searches are going to that ad group’s broad and phrase-match keywords, so the ad group could benefit from keyword expansion and search query analysis.

Example

Suppose you found an ad group which accounted for 18% of your total broad and phrase clicks. This ad group is a prime candidate for improvement for two reasons:

1. Ad group expansion

High-volume ad groups are perfect for ad group expansion.

Spitting out the ad group’s keywords into separate ad groups allows you to write more tailored ads for each keyword. Tailored ads are likely to have a beneficial effect on click-through rate (CTR), Quality Score, costs per click (CPC), ad ranking and conversion rate.

Since it is impractical for every keyword to have it’s own ad group (imagine how tedious and time-consuming 10,000 keywords and 10,000 ad groups would be!), the 10% rule highlights the ad groups and keywords that are likely to benefit most from being split out and having their own tailored ads.

2. Search query analysis

High-volume ad groups are also perfect for search query analysis.

Search queries are what people actually type into Google before they click on one of your ads. Running a search query report for the whole AdWords account allows to to assess whether each of your search queries are relevant to your business, and adding them as negative keywords if not.

Running a search query report at an ad group level, is even better. Not only can you decide if each search query is relevant to your business, but you can also decide if each search query sufficiently matches the ads in that ad group. If the ads in the ad group are very different to the search query, the search query could benefit from having its own ad group with its own personalised ads.

So for each broad and phrase search query you found that matches to the 18% ad group:

• If the search query is irrelevant to your business – add the search query as a negative keyword
• If the search query is very close to the ad group’s keywords and ads – add the search query as a keyword in the same ad group
• If the search query is different to the ad group’s keywords and ads and you think it could benefit by having it’s own personalised ads – add the search query as a keyword in a new ad group

Since it is impractical to look at the every ad group’s search queries, the 10% rule highlights only those ad groups which are likely to have the biggest effect for the amount of time you spend making changes.

Broad and phrase only

You may ask why look at only broad and phrase clicks? What about exact match?

Exact-match keywords give you complete control over the user’s search query. Since you can be 100% sure what the user will need to type into Google for your exact-match keyword to be triggered, you are able to write highly-targeted and personalised ads without having to worry about hundreds of different search queries triggering your exact-match keyword. It is relatively simple to look at an exact-match keyword and decide whether its ad could be made more relevant.

However, with broad and phrase match, things aren’t so simple. You could spend all day trying to write perfect ads which closely match your broad and phrase keywords, but ultimately it is up to Google what kinds of searches get matched to these ads.

For example, you could write a highly compelling ‘Cheap Sony TVs’ ad for your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword. However, if the user searches for ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ and they gets broad-matched to your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword, your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ ad will appear. It will look irrelevant to the user.

A better ad would mention ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’, although this is only possible by creating a dedicated ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ ad group. You know you can’t create a dedicated ad group for every search query, so where do you start? Where do you draw the line?

This lack of control and uncertainty with broad and phrase match can be a real problem for advertisers trying to create highly relevant campaigns. The whole point of the 10% Clicks Rule is to help regain some control, by providing a technique to help you quickly and easily get to the heart of your broad and phrase matching and make changes that are likely to have a powerful effect. It’s not meant to be a strict ‘rule’ as such, more a ‘guideline’ or ‘rule of thumb’ which I have found to work in my experience.

That’s all for part 1. Comments and suggestions welcome.

In Part 2: Process, I’ll take you through a step-by-step guide to running rule for yourself – finding those ad groups in your own Google AdWords account that could benefit from a little TLC. If you’re more interested in exactly how the 10% Clicks Rule actually works or how it can help to improve your AdWords results, skip to Part 3: Does it Work?

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.