Google Ads Strategy for keyword targeting is super important for driving quality traffic to your website, generating leads, and achieving a high return on investment (ROI) for your advertising campaigns. In this comprehensive guide, we will share how keywords work in ad campaigns, the types of keywords, negative keyword lists, and keyword bidding strategies that will help you to enhance your campaign performance.
Keyword Research
Researching keywords is a crucial exercise before setting up an ad, it helps you to find the right keywords for your business. Here’s an approach to finding out the relevant keywords:
Your Business Goals
Before jumping into the keyword research part of your strategy, understand your business goals as they can impact your campaign direction and keyword choices.
Your business goals could be maximum traffic, sales or lead conversion, etc.
Generate Keyword Ideas
The keyword list contains potential keywords related to your products or services including synonyms, variations, and long-tail keywords. To make this task easier, we have various tools in the market like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner which can help you to fetch relevant keywords ideas for your ad.
We recommend having 15-20 keywords per ad group when starting your campaign.
Competitor Analysis
With the help of Ads and Websites of your competitor, you can analyse keywords they are targeting. This will help you to frame your keyword list based on market trends.
Keyword Intent
Believe it or not, having an understanding of keyword intent alone can boost your campaign performance to another level. Without considering keyword intent, a well-funded campaign can fail.
With intent-driven keywords, you can attract high-quality traffic to your website and leads.
What are High Intent and Low Intent Keywords? Difference
High Intent keywords are commercial/transactional keywords that could lead to the inquiry and purchase on the part of the searcher.
For example, “best laptop for gaming”: Commercial | “buy laptop for gaming”: transactional.
Low intent keywords are informational/navigational in nature, for example, “how to fix a broken table” or direct landing of a user to a particular website for gaining more details, e.g. hp.com, apple.com
Source of Image: www.wordstream.com
Keyword Volume
Keyword volume is a metric that tells how many times a user has searched for that particular keyword in a month. Tools, like Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner provides you with an average monthly search volume of a keyword that can help in building keyword strategies.
We recommend choosing high-volume keywords with low competition for your campaigns.
Image: Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Match Types
Google Ads offers several keyword match types to control how closely a user’s search query must match your selected keywords. Each has its own use case:
Broad Match
Format: red shoes
Matches: “red shoes,” “buy red shoes online,” “how to clean red suede shoes”
Considerations: Broad match reaches a wide audience but may result in less relevant clicks.
Phrase Match
Format: “red shoes”
Matches: “red shoes,” “buy red shoes online” (but not “shoes red”)
Considerations: Provides a good balance between reach and relevance.
Exact Match
Format: [red shoes]
Matches: Only “red shoes”
Considerations: Ensures the highest relevance but may limit reach.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are crucial to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches.
Regularly review search term reports to identify and add negative keywords.
Keyword Grouping
Once you prepared the keyword list, organise them into tightly themed ad groups. Structuring of keywords into thematic-based ad groups improves ad relevance and quality score, leading to better performance. We recommend following it as one of the best practices of Google Ads.
Keyword alignment with Landing Page
Keeping ad copy aligned with keywords and bringing consistency between user search query, your ad, and the landing page, helps in achieving quality traffic and higher conversion results.
Keyword Bidding Strategies
Keyword bidding strategies in Google Ads are tactics and approaches used to determine how much you’re willing to pay for each click on your ads triggered by specific keywords.
Here are some common keyword bidding strategies in Google Ads:
Manual CPC Bidding
With manual CPC bidding, you set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each click on your keywords. This provides full control over your bids.
Use Cases: It’s suitable when you want precise control over your bidding strategy and are willing to manually adjust bids for individual keywords and ad groups.
Target CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition) Bidding
With Target CPA bidding, you set a specific cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goal. Google then automatically adjusts your bids to try and achieve that target.
Use Cases: If you have a defined target cost for acquiring a customer or lead, this strategy can help you meet your goals efficiently.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) Bidding
This strategy allows you to set a target ROAS. Google optimizes your bids to maximize your return on ad spend based on your specified goal.
Use Cases: Target ROAS is beneficial for e-commerce businesses aiming to maximize revenue while maintaining a certain return on ad spend.
Maximize Clicks
With this strategy, Google automatically adjusts your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
Use Cases: If your primary goal is to increase website traffic and you have a set budget, this strategy can be effective.
Maximize Conversions
Google’s automated bidding algorithm optimizes your bids to get the maximum number of conversions within your budget.
Use Cases: Ideal for advertisers focused on increasing conversions like lead generation or sales.
Target Impression Share
You set a target impression share (the percentage of times your ad shows compared to the total number of eligible impressions) for a campaign. Google automatically adjusts your bids to reach that target.
Use Cases: This strategy can be useful if your goal is to increase brand visibility and share of voice in the market.
Digital Squad provides rich expertise in keyword research and bidding strategies. Digital Squad is having in-house Google Ads Certified Professionals managing clients from various industry backgrounds.
Conclusion
Maintain a high-quality score by focusing on relevant keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. Higher Quality Scores can lead to lower costs per click and better ad placements.
In conclusion, a successful Google Ads keyword targeting strategy includes keyword research, the right keyword match type, thematic-based adgroups, aligned ad copy and landing pages, strategic bidding, and continuous monitoring.
By following these best practices, you can improve the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns and achieve your business goals.
For more details, here is the video given below where you can get an overview of how to conduct keyword research.
What are Keywords? | Types of Keywords (2023) | Google Ads | Part-1 | Easy for Beginners
