Running a successful Google Ads campaign largely rests on your ability to collect and understand the data on the performance of your keywords, and using that data to refine your keyword selection, and improve how you use them.
Try to think of your keywords as your workforce, and you are the boss. If some of your keywords are productive and they are producing great results for you, you may want to give them a promotion, or a pay rise, or whatever they need to become even more productive. By that same token, if some of your keywords are not productive, and they are producing subpar results, you should try to help them, and if that doesn’t work, demote them or fire them.
In this blog post, we’ll be walking you through how to gather good evidence on keyword performance and how to act on that evidence appropriately.
For any meaningful evaluation on the performance of your keywords, you will need a decent amount of data. The metrics that you would typically want to track are ‘cost’ and ‘conversions’ if the key objective is return on ad spend, which it is for most businesses. Keywords that have a relatively low cost, with relatively high conversions are the winners. And vice versa; keywords that are costing a lot, with very little conversions are the losing keywords that either need firing or demoting.
Quick note: If you demote one of your keywords (reduce your bid), you might see a pop-up message from Google, warning you that your advert might receive fewer clicks. However, if you can clearly see that the keyword is underperforming and not generating any conversions, it might still be worth reducing your bid because in most cases, the main thing to focus on is the quality of the traffic, not the quantity.
Now, you might be thinking, “how ruthless should I be when deciding which keywords need to be paused?” Or “how far should I go when increasing or decreasing my bids for a keyword?”
Well, you could do 1 of 4 things. You could:
- Pause it – Stop targeting that keyword completely.
- Restrict it – This could mean changing the match type to a more restricting match type, decreasing the bid, refining the targeting (i.e. device, audience or location, etc.).
- Maintain it – Continue to target the keyword with its current setting to gather more data to make a more informed decision.
- Expand it – This could mean increasing the bid, changing the match type to a less restrictive match type, expanding the targeting options.
Quick note: If you are using Google’s smart bidding strategy, the bid part of this is taken out of your hands. Ideally, Google’s smart bidding would weed out the non-performing keywords and stop assigning your ad spend to them, but this isn’t always the case, and it doesn’t weed out the non-performing keywords as quickly as you should be doing.
If you are using a manual bidding strategy, the most typical day-to-day changes that you might make to your keywords is the bid. There is no black and white rule of how much you should increase or decrease your bid, but it is generally recommended to increase/decrease your bids in 10% – 30% increments.
It is also important to note that the actions you take with your keywords shouldn’t just depend on the numbers in your Google Ads dashboard, but also on your advertising strategy, your tolerance level and your advertising goals. For example, if your main marketing goal is expansion, and your priority is volume and getting the maximum number of conversions and generating maximum revenue, you might err toward the side of making more and bigger bid increases and do less on the reduction side. And if you are in defensive mode, and the priority is on improving your cost per acquisition, and you are more concerned about the quality of traffic, as opposed to the quantity, then you might not want to make any bid increases at all and leave your top performing keywords as they are. But for the keywords that are bringing your averages down, you might want to treat them more ruthlessly and cut them altogether or heavily reduce bids.
Using Match Types Well
So, what do keyword match types do? They determine which searches trigger your ad. The match types specify how, and in what way the user’s search needs to match your keyword in order for your ad to be triggered and displayed.
Match Types you can use are:
- Broad Match – This match type will expand your reach and display your ads for any search that is anything to do with (and quite possibly nothing to do with!) your keyword. This match type gives you a very limited control over which search terms trigger your ad and this almost certainly will result in wasted ad spend. Therefore, if you are working with a limited budget, it may be worth ruling out this match type completely. In fact, at Key Principles, we would rarely, if ever, recommend this match type. Example: the keyword ‘bike stores’ on Broad Match, could trigger your ad with a search term ‘cheap motorbike storage in altrincham’. – Phil Taylor.
- Phrase Match – This is one of the more common match types. Google describes Phrase Match as the moderate match type, with an emphasis on the search term being closely related to your keyword. Example: the keyword ‘Home visit hearing test’ on Phrase Match could trigger your ad with the search term ‘hearing test at home for elderly’. – Key Principles
- Exact Match – This is the most precise match type. Unfortunately, this is not quite ‘exact’. With Exact Match, Google gives itself the license to expand a singular to a plural, or to invert the words, or even to substitute a word if there is a high chance that the user’s intent is closely related to the keyword that you specified. This sounds a lot like Phrase Match, but Exact Match won’t go anywhere near as far with any substitutions, and Exact Match is definitely the most precise you can get. Example: the keyword ‘Home visit hearing test’ on Exact Match could trigger your ad with the search term ‘hearing aid tests at home’. – Key Principles
Final Thoughts
Google is slowly using more and more artificial intelligence to help advertisers manage their campaigns e.g. Google’s smart bidding strategy. While it is good to have an algorithm manage parts of your campaign, you must use Google’s algorithm with caution as their algorithm doesn’t always make the right decisions. If you are working with a limited advertising budget, it would be a lot more prudent manage your campaigns manually, so you can make informed decisions on how to manage your campaign.
