Five Questions About Keywords

In which we answer queries from our recent webinars

Every month, we get great questions in our ongoing series of advertiser webinars. Even if you’ve never had a chance to attend one of these sessions, this info is too good to keep to ourselves. With this post about keywords we continue to share those questions and their answers with you.

Q: Is there a limit to the number of keywords you can have?

A: Advertisers can have as many as 1,000 ad groups per campaign, and 1,000 keywords and 20 ads per ad group. Our user interface allows you to add up to 500 keywords at a time. Keep in mind that while these are the maximum number of components you can have, you may want to consider the effort required to manage and track a large amount of keywords in each of your ad groups. As a general best practice, you may want to consider having only 20 keywords per ad group.

Q: Is there a tool I can use to find relevant keywords?

A: Your account offers several robust keyword generation tools. Just follow these steps:

1. Click the “Campaigns” tab.
2. Select a campaign.
3. Select an ad group.
4. Click the blue “+ Add Keywords” drop-down menu (next to the “Ads” tab).
5. Choose one of the three options and follow the instructions to generate or add new keywords to this ad group.

Your three methods to add keywords include:

1. “Quick Add,” which lets you simply type in keywords when you already know exactly which ones you want to add.
2.  “Choose from List,” where our system makes keyword selections that are related to current ads and keywords in the ad group—you just check the boxes next to the ones you want to add.
3. “Research Keywords,” where you enter words or phrases that describe the products or services on your website and our system offers keyword selections. You can also enter your site’s URL and our system will “crawl” the page and offer keyword suggestions.

Q: How should I organize my keywords in ad groups?

A: There are many different ways to organize keywords, but these three best practices can get you started:

• Make sure all keywords in an ad group are very closely related to one another. The “tighter” the ad group is, the more likely you are to write ads that relate to all of your keywords.
• Don’t put the same keywords in multiple ad groups, because they will compete against themselves. Two exceptions to this practice are using the same keywords in both geo-targeted and non-geo-targeted campaigns, or using the same keyword for different seasonal campaigns. For example, you can use the keyword “gift baskets” for both a Valentine’s Day campaign and a Mother’s Day campaign.
• Keep what’s working! Remove, or just move, low performers so they don’t negatively impact your ad quality and you don’t waste too much time monitoring them.

Q: Does the order of keywords matter? What about abbreviations, plurals and misspellings?

A: The order in which your keywords are added to you account does not matter. We look at plural, singular, and common misspellings as if they are the same term.

Q: How can I track the performance of my keywords?

A: The keyword performance report is available at the ad group level. Remember that historical information will not transfer to a new location when moving one keyword over to a new ad group or campaign.

— The Team