How to do effective keyword grouping for Content network PPC campaign?

[ClearWater404]

I need some help to figure out an effective way to group my keywords into Adgroup themes.

Here is the issue I face. Here are the type of keywords (just an example for illustration purpose):

weight loss supplements
lose weight with supplements
lose weight naturally
best review weight loss supplements
weight supplements reviews
weight loss reviews
weight loss supplement reviews
best weight loss supplements
lose weight reviews
lose weight pills

How would you group this?
group 1: weight loss supplements
(weight loss supplements, lose weight with supplements (??), best weight loss supplements)

group 2: weight loss reviews
(best review weight loss supplements, weight loss reviews, weight loss supplement reviews (??), lose weight reviews (??))

group 3: lose weight
(lose weight naturally, lose weight pills)


The keywords with (??) are those that give me all the headache , as I could fit them in different groups, and I have a hard time figuring out what logic to apply to create the group themes. Having hundreds of keywords, some long tail, makes this complicated.

Maybe for the content network I should not create too long-tail keywords, ... so instead of having:

AdGroup 1 (weight loss supplement reviews, best weight loss supplement reviews, best natural weight loss supplement reviews)

I would have:

AdGroup 1 (weight loss supplement reviews,natural weight loss supplement, best weight loss supplement reviews...)

Any idea on the most effective way to create adgroups (i.e. what logic to use?)

any help would be much appreciated.

[John Willer]

Think of it this way. It's called ad groups and not keyword groups.

Your ad needs to be specific to your keywords.

[ClearWater404]

thanks John. I understand this.

but on the Content network, the crawler analyzing your landing page, ads, adgroups and keywords has to "understand" the theme you are creating to come up with a bunch of relevant webpages that have AdSense on them (or equivalent for Yahoo content network websites).

The crawler needs a minimum number of words to give you impressions on a good range of relevant websites. I am told it is around 15-30 keywords per adgroup that you should include per adgroup to give the crawler a good idea of the Theme (that's in Yahoo - probably similar in Google).

so I want to make sure I give the crawler the right "food" (keywords) to understand my theme (adgroup).

So my question is still out there ;-)

[dburk]

Hi ClearWater404,

The most effective way to group keywords is one keyword per ad group. If you prefer to group your keywords together you can use the Keyword Grouper tool built into AdWords Editor. All it takes is a couple of clicks and your done.

[ClearWater404]

The most effective way to group keywords is one keyword per ad group.

that is true for the Search network, but from what I know not the case for the Content network where you restrict the # of impressions you get / # of relevant webpages your ad will appear on if you do it

1 kw = 1 adgroup

anyone to confirm?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by ClearWater404

that is true for the Search network, but from what I know not the case for the Content network where you restrict the # of impressions you get / # of relevant webpages your ad will appear on if you do it

1 kw = 1 adgroup

anyone to confirm?

Hi ClearWater404,

In the past I used groups of keywords for the content network, but I became frustrated that I was unable to determine which keywords generated the best ROI and what the optimal bid should be on a keyword by keyword basis.

I ran a series of experiments and found that using a single keyword in each ad group an effective way to optimized campaigns for the content network. This allows you see which keywords trigger impressions, clicks and/or conversions. When you group them you will have no idea.

[Lucid]

ClearWater, you have the right idea in your original post, you're just doing it a bit wrong.

I assume the product is weight loss pills/supplements. Your Group 1 is OK. But in your Group 2, you have the keyword "weight loss reviews" with no mention of supplements. This should be in a group of its own, if you wanted to bid on that keyword which doesn't seem to be relevant if you were selling pills. Same with Group 3 which maybe should be named Lose Weight Pills.

Don's idea is a good one. But in content, does it matter to know which keywords triggers the ad? Also, Google goes by the theme of the keywords. It has been suggested they need at least 20 keywords to properly determine the theme so I think that one keyword might not do this as effectively. Besides, content is more effective when targeting specific sites related to your offer. When using keywords, your ads appear on all sorts of sites at the mere mention of one of your keywords.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Lucid

Don's idea is a good one. But in content, does it matter to know which keywords triggers the ad? Also, Google goes by the theme of the keywords. It has been suggested they need at least 20 keywords to properly determine the theme so I think that one keyword might not do this as effectively. Besides, content is more effective when targeting specific sites related to your offer. When using keywords, your ads appear on all sorts of sites at the mere mention of one of your keywords.

Hi Lucid,

I understand that logic and I went along with those suggestions for some time. However, if you want to take your campaign optimization to the next level, you need that additional granularity. You are given the option to bid at the keyword level in your content network campaigns, so how do you determine the optimal bid level for each keyword if you have no idea how each individual keyword is performing?

[ChrisBa]

To be honest - with the content network you don't need to worry about grouping keywords nearly as much as you do with the search network

[Lucid]

> To be honest - with the content network you don't need to worry about grouping
> keywords nearly as much as you do with the search network

Maybe so Chris. But Don has a good point in that granularizing will give you more concrete data in optimizing a campaign. Unfortunately, I don't have enough experience in targeting the content network using keywords to know what kind of difference his suggestion would make. Given he's a fellow PPC expert, I'm inclined to follow it or at the very least, try it for myself.

[Thumoney]

I found the idea from Don very interesting and it is also backed up by tests. Don, have you been able to get a good amount of impressions with "1-keyword" content campaigns?

And are those keywords specific or more general?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Thumoney

I found the idea from Don very interesting and it is also backed up by tests. Don, have you been able to get a good amount of impressions with "1-keyword" content campaigns?

And are those keywords specific or more general?

Hi Thumoney,

For the sake of clarity let me say that I don't do "1-keyword" content campaigns, I do "1-keyword" ad groups in my content network campaigns, which I'm sure is what you meant.

While some of these keywords generate a lot of impressions, others generate very few. I have found that the overall number of impressions tends to be about the same for set of keywords, whether they are part of the same ad group or in separate groups.

My keywords are mostly very specific but I do have some general ones. As long as my EPC is greater than my CPC for that keyword then I'm making money.