Keywords

Keywords: What Are Keywords & Why Do They Matter for PPC?

In pay-per-click marketing, everything starts with a keyword.

When you use Google or any other search engine, you type words into the search box to find what you’re looking for. The results that Google returns – whether they’re organic results or paid advertisements – are there because they’re relevant to the words in the search box. And if you want your ads to show up on the page, you have to bid on that keyword.
Therefore, to succeed at PPC, you need to make sure you’re bidding on the right keywords. This process includes a few moving parts:

• PPC Keyword Research – Using keyword research tools and analytics data to find a list of keywords that are highly relevant to your business offerings. The goal is to show up in the search results when people search for products or services that are relevant to your business.

• Keyword Grouping and Organization – The most effective PPC accounts organize keywords into small groups of tightly related keywords.

• Negative Keywords – Negative keywords are a way of filtering out unwanted clicks. By setting a negative keyword, you tell Google what searches you don’t want your ads to display for.

• Keyword Bid Optimization – Everyone has a limited budget, so it’s important to focus your spending on your best performing keywords, without paying more than necessary.

As you can see, PPC isn’t just a matter of finding the right keywords. In order to get high ad rankings at low costs, you’ll need to work at achieving relevance across your account. That means having:

• An organized account structure

• Targeted, compelling ads, and

• Optimized landing pages

All of these factors will contribute to your keyword Quality Score – the key metric that determines where your ads are displayed and how much you pay for each ad click.

You can learn more about all of these concepts later on in the coursework. For now, let’s focus on keywords and how they function in your PPC account.

Keywords vs Search Queries

In casual conversation, the terms "keyword" and "search query" are often used interchangeably, but there is actually a difference. What is the difference between a keyword and a search query?

A keyword is an abstraction that we extrapolate from multiple search queries.

A search query is the actual word or string of words that a search engine user types into the search box.

As search marketers, what we target are keywords. For example, one of your target keywords might be “sunglasses.” When you bid on the keyword sunglasses, the search queries that trigger your ad might include variations like “women’s sunglasses,” “aviator sunglasses,” or “sunglasses for small faces.” These search queries all map back to your primary keyword.

The Importance of Keyword Grouping

Because search queries have so much variance, best practices dictate that PPC marketers group their keywords into related clusters.

Effectively grouping and organizing your keywords improves your PPC strategy by en­abling you to create more relevant, Quality Score-friendly ad groups, text ads and landing pages.

The easiest way to get started is to use a keyword grouping tool to break a large list of keywords down into smaller groups by theme. You can then break those groups into even smaller groups, forming a hierarchy, or tree structure:



This structure will map to your AdWords campaigns and the ad groups within those campaigns.

How Keywords work in your PPC Ads


Your text ads need to be relevant to the keywords you’re bidding on in order to earn high Quality Scores, which determine where your ad appears and your cost per click (CPC).

The keyword you’re bidding on should actually appear in your ad in order to show relevance to both Google and the searcher. The term the user searches on will appear in bold font in your ad, so using the keyword more than once will really make your ad “light up”:




Some tips for using keywords in your PPC ads:

• Try to use the keyword in the headline and once more in the description lines, if you can do so while still communicating benefits and including a call to action.

• Bid on long-tail keywords, which have less competition and are therefore more targeted and less costly.

• Consider dynamic keyword insertion, which inserts the searcher’s exact search query into your ad, making it extra-relevant to them.

• Use sitelinks to expand your ad and include more related keywords.

Keyword Match Types

When you bid on keywords, you have the option of telling Google how restrictive it should be when matching your ads against relevant search queries. There are four keyword match types, from least restrictive to most restrictive:

• Broad match – This is the default keyword match type. Google will match your ad against the greatest number of possible queries. For example, if you bid on the keyword “massage,” your ads might show when people search on longer phrases that include “massage,” like “Miami massage” or “deep tissue massage therapist.” Your ads might also show for closely related searches like “hot stone therapy.”

• Modified broad match – With modified broad match, you can tell Google to only display your ads when one or more words is in the query, preventing synonym matches. If you bid on “+massage,” only queries that actually include the word “massage” will trigger your ad.

• Phrase match – This match type allows you to tell Google to display your ad only when the search query includes a full phrase, such as “hot stone.” (The words have to appear in that order.) Other words may be included in the search query before or after the phrase.

• Exact match – The most restrictive match type, exact match tells Google to only match your ads to queries that are exactly the same, word for word, as your keyword.

Broad match keywords have the advantage of allowing the maximum number of impressions and clicks – however, those clicks are less targeted and may be less likely to convert. The more restrictive the match type, the fewer clicks you’ll receive, but that traffic will be more relevant and more qualified.
To learn more about keyword match types, download our free white paper, “Complete Guide to AdWords Matching Options.”

Keyword Tools to Help You Along the Way

WordStream offers a suite of free keyword tools to help you get started with keyword research, organization, and management:

• The Free Keyword Tool is an easy-to-use, FREE keyword suggestion tool that returns more keywords than even paid tools.

• The Free Keyword Grouper takes a list of keywords as input and returns keyword groups ready for PPC campaigns and search-optimized web pages.

• The Free Keyword Niche Finder is a keyword suggestion tool and keyword grouper in one. Enter a keyword search term to get back structured keyword suggestions and find your most profitable keyword niches.

Now that you’ve got a handle on keywords, let’s move on the next lesson.