I’m sure that every one of us at some point has been told- “less is more”; or, “simplicity is key.” And while this certainly applies to many walks of life, there is a never ending debating of whether this ideology applies to a well built Google Ad Words campaign. The question remains – to keyword stuff or not?
Lots of Keywords Means Lots of Traffic- Right?We’ve mentioned before that it’s somewhat intuitive to stuff each ad group with as many related keywords as possible. Grab all the traffic! What’s the harm in having a long list of keywords to make sure you are never missing out on a click?
Well, ignore your childhood advice and go against our intuition on this one. Too many keywords dilutes the performance of your account in a number of ways. While there isn’t a magic number, we can certainly say there is a range you need to stay within in order to fully optimize your accounts.
Ps. Have we ever told you what “optimize” means in the world of PPC? We will in next week’s blog post.
No More Than 30 Keywords in Each Ad Group And 30 is pushing it. At Infotel Multimedia, we tend to keep within the range of 5-20 keywords per ad group (remember, per ad group- each campaign can have dozens of ad groups) to make sure we are fully optimizing each client’s campaign.
If only 5 keywords sounds way too few for you, take a look at five reasons why lots of keywords will give you less results.
Too Many Keywords Eats Your Budget Each ad group is privvy to the budget set at the campaign level, right?
(Not sure about the structure of a Google Ad Words account? Oeef- you need to be. Let us run you through it.)
While you can set bids at ad group or keyword level, your ad group will still be privvy to the campaign budget. And what is your budget allocated to everyday?
Your keywords.
So, let’s say you have an ad group with 60 keywords, a cost-per-click of $1 per term and a daily budget of $20- your daily budget is going to be spread really, really thin. Your budget is going to be eaten up right away by the multitude of keywords you have kickin’ around in your account, regardless of keyword quality. Your decreased control over your keywords and keyword quality means your budget (kind of) gets thrown out the window.
This means no more impressions for your campaign today. Not cool.
Too Many Keywords Leaves Little Room for Growth Keyword optimization should be ongoing for your campaigns, and keyword research is a very necessary part of this process.
Almost every month, you will find keywords and phrases that should be tested within your account based on forecasts of profitability and suitability.
But, you have to have room for them.
Adding more keywords to an already crowded account will continue to detract from your top performing keywords, and leave no room to test the success of potentially new killer keywords.
In other words- don’t stunt your growth. Leave room for new superstar keywords to enter the mix.
Ad Copy, Relevancy, CTR and Quality Score Will SufferWe will never stop harping on about quality score. Ever. Call it an unhealthy obsession, but quality score is a huge deal in running PPC campaigns. As a quick little refresh for you, quality score – with 7/10+ being the score you should be shooting for – is comprised of:
Ad Relevancy + CTR + Landing Page Experience
Your keywords play a huge role in determining ad relevancy and CTR, because they are the bridge between whether your ads answer the users search query. If you have hundreds of keywords in your ad groups, it is unlikely that every keyword is tightly aligned with your ads written copy and intent. When your ads aren’t tightly aligned to your keywords, your ad relevancy suffers. Your CTR will also suffer, as search users will be less likely to click on ads that aren’t as relevant to their search query as possible.
If you dilute these two metrics, your quality score will decrease. In addition to your ad being shown less in the search auction, you will actually pay more for each click.
Focus on just a handful of carefully chosen, high return keywords that are both an excellent representation of your business, landing page (or website) and your ad copy.
Too Many Keywords Likely Means a Tonne of RedundancyIf your ad groups are segmented well, and separated thematically, you’re going to have trouble writing 100 versions of your high return keywords without sounding very redundant.
Pro Tip: If your keywords aren’t starting to sound redundant after 20 terms, there is a very good opportunity to split your ad group and tighten the relevancy up.
Too Many Keywords are an Organizational NightmareA fully optimized account requires a lot of work. Now, imagine you’re trying to navigate around 50+ keywords in each ad group. It can make organizing your account really difficult and more importantly, analyzing your keyword performance almost impossible.
Whether you manage your PPC campaigns automatically or manually, the extra “fluff” from unneeded keywords can really throw a wrench in swift data collection. Most importantly though, it can seriously delay your turnaround time on making optimization decisions that will increase the profitability of your campaign.
Organize your keyword lists with us. 10 minutes, and no obligation.
No Magic Number- But Close. We can’t give you the magic number of keywords to throw into your ad groups. They will differ based on a number of factors.
But we can tell you- any more than 30 and you’re doing more harm than good when it comes to a money making Google Ad Words campaign.
Speaking of money making campaigns- let’s talk about how PPC can work for you.
How Many Keywords Should Each Ad Group Have? (You’ll be Surprised.)
