Google Ads Keyword Scaling
Which keywords drive better organic traffic? Scale and find out.
WHAT ARE GOOD KEYWORD SOURCES?
External keyword resources
There are many paid and free tools out there that will help you identify new keywords. It’s a good way to set up your account from scratch. If you’re searching for long-tail product keywords, have a look at our free tool. We also released a free Python script to scrape the Google Autosuggest on a scale.
Your own PPC queries
When it comes to an automated solution for keyword scaling, it’s great to use broad match-type keywords (see PPC keyword guide) or Dynamic Search Ads for seeding new keywords. If you run Google Shopping, you also have a great resource for mining new money keywords.
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON TYPES OF KEYWORDS?
Product based keywords
When you’re advertising products, you’ll use your product feed data to create many keywords for different hierarchical levels. You can use product names, lines, and categories, also keywords that point directly to a specific product. The biggest challenge is the long-tail product keywords. In most cases, the feed values for your products don’t match the way the user searches.
Solution/Problem based keywords
You can’t take just a feed and create a high number of good keywords right away. Firstly, you should spend time with clustering and grouping keywords to identify the most important topics in the users’ search intents. We provide a software service to identify and structure those types of money keywords.
HOW TO BUILD AN AUTOMATED PIPELINE FOR NEW KEYWORDS
Set up keyword seeds
Set up accounts to trigger new queries that aren’t covered with keywords yet. DSA campaigns or broad/mbroad keywords are common approaches. The main optimization task for these accounts is to block noisy search patterns as soon as possible. Besides, have also a look at the keyword negativation section.
Define rules when a query should be added as keyword
Avoid adding everything to your keyword account. Otherwise, there will be many “low search volume” keywords that will never drive traffic. Think of some filtering rules like a minimum amount of clicks or impressions to add in a more focused way. Of course, feel free to add some extra restrictions where a proof in a conversion is required.
Work with IDs for product based keywords
If you have unique identifiers for your product inventory available, you should use them. It’ll help you a lot for automation tasks. We recommend using something like keyname:keyvalue in your ad groups. It’ll make it easier to connect different accounts for adding the new keywords to the right ad groups.
Use SKAGs as target for solution/problem based keywords
If you don’t have a unique key available in your ad group name, it’s hard to merge new keywords into the existing ad group. If you use new single keyword ad groups, the complexity reduces because you should add a new element to the account.
Use ad script for implementing your keyword pipeline
Now, just put it all together in one Google Ads script. Fetch the queries from your seed accounts and identify the valid search terms by applying your filter rules. For adding the new keywords to the correct place, use the key identifiers in the source accounts and match them with the keys in your target accounts.
HOW TO FIND THE BEST MATCHING LANDING PAGE FOR YOUR KEYWORD
You can match a keyword directly to a product page
This approach depends on your chosen account structure. If you set up a specific DSA target for each of your product URLs, you know where the search query is pointing to. Also, you can use this URL right away for linking your keyword.
Link to your internal website search
If your internal site search is doing a good job, it can work great as a low-tech solution. Just link your keyword to your website search and hope that the results are relevant. Back it up with a monitoring script that looks for bounce rates on these keywords and pauses the poor ones. It was probably a keyword where the search result was bad.
Use Google’s site search for your own domain
Sending every keyword to Google’s site search is a lean-approach. The results of Google match the relevant ones. If you combine it with some traditional rules, it’ll be a pretty solid solution. For example, you can leave out some unwanted landing page patterns or compare how well the keyword matches the page title or the SERP snippet. It works great for solution/problem-based queries.
Build your own search query classifier
When you have a product feed available, you can set up your own small search engine that tries to match your queries with products. You don’t have to pay for API requests, like with a Google site search. Also, you can classify bigger query sets in a shorter time. It’s a great piece in your PPC architecture when you have an e-commerce website with a variety of products.
HOW TO CREATE A MATCHING AD COPY
Quick & dirty with keyword insertions
With this approach, you can run our new keywords right away. Use the keyword insertion in your headline and keep the rest generic. For example, use USPs to fill the ad space. Of course, you can do better than this approach. Besides, a good focus is to optimize the top 20% based on impressions and get the best in class there within the next weeks.
Template based with a product feed
This is the easiest case. You have a lot of information available in your product feed you can use for creating great ad copies. Use brand names, prices or discount values for creating already highly customized texts for your keyword. Sometime it is getting challenging when you have to shorten your product names that are available in your feed.
Cluster based ad matching
If you cluster your keywords into keyword topics, you can define a well-matching ad copy for many keywords. Before starting, you should add a fair amount of ad copies. When a new keyword is added, we assign the keyword to a cluster first. Then use the text of the matching keyword group. It’s a great approach for solution/problem-based keywords.