The Challenge of Parenting Single-Keyword Ad Groups
Here's how advertisers can provide "only-child"-style attention to all of their keywords, customized, highly relevant ad copy, and landing pages scaled across their entire product portfolio.
Here's how advertisers can provide "only-child"-style attention to all of their keywords, customized, highly relevant ad copy, and landing pages scaled across their entire product portfolio.
Growing up, my friend Joe was an only child. Being from a family with three kids, I couldn’t help but be envious of all the special attention he received.
He got his own room. He didn’t have to fight with his siblings over which TV show to watch. He got all the Christmas presents. As far as I could see, Joe was living the good life as an only child.
Some search marketers (SEMs) like to treat their keywords like “only” children. They know that one element which factors into a quality score is a keyword’s relevance to other keywords in its ad group.
By creating “single keyword” ad groups, SEMs eliminate the potential for other keywords to “pollute” the relevance of the ad group and hope to improve quality scores in the process.
In addition, a single-keyword strategy seems simpler. Single keywords get all the attention.
They get ad copy and landing pages written specifically for them. It seems like an ideal strategy.
However, managing hundreds or even thousands of single-keyword ad groups creates a big challenge for SEMs — one not unlike parenting a large number of “only children.”
First and foremost, a single keyword strategy doesn’t necessarily result in higher quality scores. Quality score is still primarily driven by click-through rate (CTR), and CTR is driven by relevance of the keyword to the ad copy. Even with only one keyword in each ad group, the quality score won’t necessarily improve if generic ad copy is still associated with the ad group.
Furthermore, a single-keyword ad group strategy creates several new problems along the way:
The secret to success is knowing when it makes sense to deploy a single-keyword ad group. For example, there are certainly cases where head keywords rightfully deserve their own ad group.
However, in most cases, SEMs should work to combine keywords into tightly-themed ad groups. This strategy enables advertisers to provide “only-child”-style attention to all of their keywords, providing customized, highly relevant ad copy and landing pages scaled across their entire product portfolio.
Technology exists today to help search marketers treat each keyword like a stereotypical “only child” — without the parenting headaches. There are technologies that can help SEMs group thousands of keywords into tightly-themed ad groups, automatically generate relevant ad copy for each ad group, and continually optimize performance over time. It’s like spoiling each keyword rotten.
Join us for SES London 2011, the Leading Search & Social Marketing Event, taking place February 21-25! The conference offers sessions on topics including search engine optimization (SEO), keyword analysis, link building, local, mobile, video, analytics, social media, and more. Register now.