The Secret Power of the AdWords Search Terms Report

AdWords Targeting - Katniss Everdeen

Katniss is aware of learn how to hit her goal. So ought to PPC entrepreneurs. Picture by Murray Shut by way of Lionsgate.

AdWords is a hideous beast of an software, however it has one tremendously easy core precept:

The key to success on AdWords is NOT getting your adverts in entrance of the MOST folks, it’s getting your adverts in entrance of the RIGHT folks.

The truth is, AdWords has a function constructed into it that’s designed particularly to reward you for displaying your adverts to fewer folks. It’s known as High quality Rating.

The most important part of High quality Rating is Click on-By Fee (CTR) which is the share of folks that click on in your advert after seeing it.

On this publish, I’m going to point out you an excellent easy course of for rising your CTR, boosting your High quality Rating and decreasing your CPC (Price-Per-Click on) through the use of an AdWords function most entrepreneurs have by no means even heard of.

Prepared?

Match sorts in 60 seconds

The only strategy to increase CTR is to focus on your adverts extra narrowly by means of higher key phrase concentrating on, and so as to do that you just first have to grasp match sorts.

While you create a search marketing campaign in AdWords you select “key phrases” to bid on. When you enter your key phrases you may select from certainly one of 3 “match sorts”:

  1. Broad match – indicated by a number of phrases written with out every other punctuation eg. girls footwear
  2. Phrase match – indicated by a number of phrases written in double quotes eg. “girls footwear”
  3. Precise match – indicated by a number of phrases written in sq. brackets eg. [ladies shoes]

While you bid on these “key phrases” you’re actually bidding for a spot on the web page of outcomes that somebody sees after they kind a search into Google. These are known as “search engine outcomes pages” or SERPs.

If you happen to bid on the broad match key phrase “girls footwear,” you’ll be bidding on the SERPs for tens of hundreds of various search phrases. For instance:

  • girls night footwear
  • footwear for ladies
  • sling again pumps

If you happen to bid on the phrase match key phrase “girls footwear”, you’ll be bidding on the SERPs for fewer completely different search phrases, particularly people who include the phrase “girls footwear” in that order and with nothing in between. For instance:

  • girls footwear petite sizes
  • low-cost girls footwear

however you’ll NOT be bidding on the SERPs for the phrases:

  • girls night footwear
  • footwear for girls

If you happen to bid on the precise match key phrase [ladies shoes] you’ll be bidding on the SERP for precisely one search time period, particularly:

That’s how match sorts work. As you may see, your concentrating on turns into exponentially extra slim as you go from broad, to phrase to precise match.

Why broad match ruins your high quality rating

Broad match sounds nice, proper? You get to bid on heaps of various SERPs with no effort.

In actuality, you find yourself bidding on SERPs for a great deal of queries that are solely tangentially associated to what you are promoting (or fully unrelated).

Each time somebody sees certainly one of your adverts and doesn’t click on, your click on by means of fee goes down. This implies your high quality rating for that key phrase goes down, and you pay extra per click on.

On the similar time there are folks on the market who will simply click on on something with out actually figuring out if it’s related to them or not.

So not solely are you getting a decrease click on by means of fee and larger value per click on, you’re losing cash on clicks from individuals who have been by no means going to purchase from you anyway.

The Search Phrases Report back to the rescue

Luckily, AdWords has this neat function known as the search phrases report. Most individuals I speak to, even when they’ve have been utilizing AdWords for fairly a very long time, have NEVER seemed on the search phrases report and after they do, it blows their thoughts.

First, right here’s learn how to get to your search phrases report:

  1. Click on “all on-line campaigns” on the left
  2. Click on the key phrases tab
  3. Select “key phrase particulars”
  4. Select “all”
  5. Witness the health

Here’s a screenshot demonstrating learn how to get there:

 

AdWords Targeting - Search Terms ReportAdWords Targeting - Search Terms Report

These belongings you’re aren’t “key phrases”, they’re “search phrases.” These are the search phrases whose SERPs you’ve been bidding on together with your key phrases.

If you happen to’re utilizing broad match key phrases you will notice a variety of irrelevant search phrases in right here. If you happen to’re utilizing phrase match you’ll see fewer irrelevant search phrases, and if (hypothetically) you have been bidding solely on precise match key phrases then you definitely would solely see search phrases right here that precisely matched your key phrases.

So how can the Search Phrases Report save my enterprise?

There are two quite simple issues you are able to do to instantly enhance your click-through fee (and thus high quality rating) and cut back your value per click on utilizing the search phrases report.

1. Put the most effective search phrases into their very own advert teams

Begin by downloading your search phrases report and opening it up within the spreadsheet software of your alternative.

Now order in descending order by the impressions column (or conversions for those who’re monitoring them – for those who’re not, you need to be, however that’s a subject for an additional article).

For every of the search phrases which can be most related to what you are promoting and which have essentially the most impressions, create a brand new advert group with precisely one key phrase and one advert in it.

Acquired that? One advert group, one precise match key phrase, one advert.

Use the search time period within the headline of the advert (you might have to edit it a bit to make it match or to make it grammatically appropriate) and attempt to embody as most of the phrases from the search time period in the remainder of the advert.

Right here is an annotated screenshot with an instance from certainly one of my very own campaigns to promote my AdWords eBook:

AdWords Targeting - Ad GroupsAdWords Targeting - Ad Groups

Relying on what number of search phrases you have got this may be fairly time consuming however it’s well worth the funding.

2. Block undesirable SERPs with destructive key phrases

As you scroll down your search phrases report, you’re going to see a bunch of search phrases whose SERPs you clearly don’t want to seem on.

A basic instance is folks searching for “jobs” or “careers” in your business.

Match sorts work simply the identical for destructive key phrases as they do for constructive key phrases, so for instance for those who see that you’ve got a bunch of search phrases like:

  • jobs promoting girls footwear
  • careers in girls retail
  • girls footwear gross sales jobs

You can select so as to add 2 phrase match destructive key phrases:

It’s additionally value noting that you just’ll typically need to use precise match destructive key phrases. An incredible instance of that is the one phrase search time period for no matter you promote.

If you happen to promote girls footwear, you’ll in all probability discover that you just get quite a lot of site visitors from the search time period [shoes] by itself, and it’ll sometimes have a horrible ROI.

You don’t need to block out any question that comprises the phrase footwear, so you may’t use a phrase match destructive key phrase. On this case you’d block:

You must usually by no means use broad match destructive key phrases. If you happen to do you’ll almost definitely find yourself throwing the infant out with the bathwater.

You possibly can add destructive key phrases to advert teams, campaigns, or to destructive key phrase lists which you’ll re-use between a number of campaigns. Google’s own support documentation has good data on how to do that.

The Outcome

You don’t should take my phrase for it. Under are 7 screenshots from completely different shoppers in numerous industries. Some are on very small budgets and a few on very massive ones.

All of them present the identical pattern. As you go from broad match, to phrase match to precise match 3 issues occur:

  1. CTR will increase (the largest part in High quality Rating, keep in mind)
  2. CPC decreases
  3. Place will increase

AdWords-targeting-results1AdWords-targeting-results1

AdWords-targeting-results2AdWords-targeting-results2

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AdWords-targeting-results4AdWords-targeting-results4

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In all instances we now have finished nothing greater than goal our adverts higher by analysing the search phrases report: no copywriting voodoo, no hacks, no cut up testing, no magic. Simply smarter key phrase concentrating on.

— Iain Dooley