Keywords are the foundation for any successful advertising campaign on the Google Advertising platform. They are the words (or phrases) that are used to match your ads with the terms people are searching for. Selecting high quality, relevant keywords for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want, when you want.
This section is broken into different topics in order to give you a deeper understanding of how keywords work:
Keywords Definition
How Keywords Work
Keyword Match Types
Tips for Building a Keyword List
Keywords: Definition
Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear.
- The keywords you choose are used to show your ads to people. Select high-quality, relevant keywords for your ad campaign to help you reach only the most interested people, who are more likely to become your customers.
- When someone searches on Google, your ad could be eligible to appear based on the similarity of your keywords to the person’s search terms, as well as your keyword match types. Keywords are also used to match your ad to sites in the Google Network that are related to your keywords and ads.
- A great keyword list can help improve the performance of your ads and help you to avoid higher prices. Poor keywords can ultimately cause you to have higher prices and lower ad position.
- You can add match types to your keywords to help control which searches your ad can be matched with.
How Keywords Work
To get your ads to appear when people search for your product or service, the keywords you choose need to match the words or phrases that people search for.
Example
If you sell frisbees, you can add “buy frisbee” as a keyword in your Google Ads campaign. When people type “buy frisbee” on Google search, your ad might appear on the search results page. In addition, if your Search campaign is also targeting the display network, then your ad could also appear on websites about ultimate frisbee.
When a customer searches for a term that matches your keyword, your ad enters an auction to determine if it will show. Learn more about the ad auction.
The cost for each keyword will be different depending on the quality of your keyword, your competition in the auction, and other factors. Make sure your keywords and landing page are all closely related to the terms that a customer might be searching for. To help you understand the quality for your keywords, each keyword has a Quality Score.
This score is based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Higher quality ads and relevant keywords typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions. Learn how to make sure your ads are relevant.
How your keywords match to searches
You can use keyword match types to have more control over what searches your keywords match. For example, with exact match your keyword will only match searches that are identical to your exact keyword, or close variants of your exact keyword. With phrase match, your keyword will match close variants of your exact keyword and may include additional words before or after.
If you don’t specify a match type, your keyword will default to broad match and can match to variations of your keywords.
How to exclude searches
To prevent your ad from showing for particular searches, you can also add negative keywords.
Negative keywords can help you reduce costs by making sure your ad shows just to the audience you want. Learn more About negative keywords.
Example
If you sell dog clothes you can target searches for “pet clothes” and add “cat” as a negative keyword to make sure your ad doesn’t appear to people looking for cat clothes.
Where your ads appear
You choose were your ads can appear with Google search results and on other search sites when your keywords are relevant to a user’s search.
- Google search sites: Ads can appear above or below search results on Google Search. They can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Images, and Google Maps – including the Maps app.
- Google search partners: Ads might appear with search results on websites of Google search partners or as part of a related search or link unit. For text ads, search partners include hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as Google Video and other Google sites. Product Shopping ads can appear on search partner sites that display and link to products for sale. The clickthrough rate (CTR) for ads on search partner sites doesn’t impact your Quality Score on google.com.
Tips
- Choose your keywords carefully. Include terms or phrases that your customers would use to describe your products or services. Make sure your keywords directly relate to the theme of your ad and the page you’re directing your customers to. Keywords of two or three words tend to work most effectively.
- Group similar keywords.Try grouping your keywords into themes. These themes can be based on your products, services, or other categories. For example, if you sell rings, you can have a group of keywords for “engagement rings” and another group of keywords for “wedding rings.” Then you can create separate ad groups for these groups of keywords and have specific ads for “engagement rings” and specific ads for “wedding rings.”
Keyword Match Types
https://youtu.be/m4SaXPVidWk
It’s very important for you to understand all the different keyword match types in order to control when your ad’s are triggered and how NOT to waste money.
Here are the available match types, their symbol, and how to use them.
Keyword Match Types:
Broad Match
Modified Broad Match
Phrase Match
Exact Match
Negative
Broad Match (Default)
When you use broad match, your ad is eligible to serve when someone searches for relevant variations of your keyword. This helps you attract more visitors to your website, spend less time building keyword lists, and focus your spending on keywords that work.
Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned if you don’t specify another match type (exact match, phrase match, or negative match). The Google Ads system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, including synonyms, possible misspellings, stemmings (such as floor and flooring), and other related searches.
Broad match keywords can serve on searches that don’t contain the keyword from the keyword list, and searches that are related to the keyword but don’t have the same meaning. To help deliver relevant matches, this match type may also take the customer’s recent search activities into account.
Broad match is the most commonly used, and the one that I recommend using the least. As its name suggests, this keyword match type allows you to reach the widest audience. When your keyword in is broad match, your ads are eligible to appear whenever a user searches any word in your key phrase, in any order. It also allows misspellings and synonyms to trigger your ads to appear.
Example
To use the broad match type, you would enter the keyword with no additional symbols.
example keyword
| Broad Match keyword: | Ads may show on searches for: |
| low-carb diet plan | carb-free foods low-carb diets low calorie recipes Mediterranean diet books low-carbohydrate dietary program |
In my search for low-carb diet plan, ads were returned for Keto, a diet plan, and meal delivery.
When you ad appears for related (but unwanted audiences), you have the potential to receive unwanted clicks = which waste your ad budget AND lower your Quality Score. This could be a big problem for those with a limited budget.
Modified Broad Match
Broad match modifier gives you more control than standard broad match. This option ensures that your ads only show in searches that include the words you’ve marked with a plus sign, such as +red +shoes, or close variants of these terms.
Broad match modifier terms that you designate with “+” can match to any part of a search. Additional words may appear in the search before, after, or in between your “+” terms. For example, the broad match modified keywords +red +shoes can match a search for “shoes for sale that are red” or “red men’s shoes,” but not for “blue shoes” or “red hiking boots.” This extra degree of specificity can help increase how relevant searches are to your ads, and improve your clickthrough (CTR) and conversion rates.
Your ad may also show for close variations of the individual “+” terms or the combination of these terms into a single keyword.
Example
To use the modified broad match type, you would enter the keyword with the “+” symbol in front.
+example +keyword
| Broad match modifier keyword | Ads may show for these searches | Ads won’t show for these searches |
|---|---|---|
| +mens +shoes | shoes sale for men footwear in style for men shoes for guys men’s socks and shoes |
men’s socks kids trainers |
| +lawn +mowing +service | services to mow my lawn lawn mowing and edging service grass cutting and gardening services rates for services that cut your grass |
lawn aerating service gardening services |
| +aruba +vacation | all inclusive vacations aruba vacation ideas in aruba |
aruba cruises |
In my search for “+low-carb +diet +plan” notice the ads Google returned.
Using the modified broad match type, Google must return the words “low-carb” AND “diet” AND “plan” or very closely related terms (Ad #2 Google substituted “Meal” for “Diet”).
Using any modifier adds more specificity to your keywords, and therefore narrow their reach. So, while using a broad match modifier can increase the relevance of your keywords, it in turn can decrease your expected traffic.
Phrase Match
With phrase match, your ad can appear when people search for your phrase and close variations of that phrase, even if they include one or more words before or after it. Close variants include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemmings (such as floor and flooring), abbreviations, accents, implied terms, synonyms and paraphrases, and variants of your keyword terms that have the same meaning. Word order is important with phrase match, meaning that your ad won’t appear if someone enters an additional unrelated word in the middle of your keyword. Words in the keyword phrase can be reordered as long as the meaning of the phrase is maintained.
Phrase match is more flexible than exact match, but is more targeted than the default broad match option. With phrase match, you can reach more customers, while still showing your ads to customers who are most likely searching for your product or service.
Example
To use the Phrase Match type, you would enter the keyword with the ” quotation ” symbols wrapped around your keyword.
“example keyword”
| Phrase match keyword: | Ads may show on searches for: | Ads won’t show on searches for: |
| “tennis shoes” | shoes for tennis buy tennis shoes on sale red tenis shoes comfortable tennis sneakers |
tennis rackets and shoes tennis players that wear red shoes |
In my search for “low-carb diet plan” notice the ads Google returned.
Notice that the phrase “low-carb diet plan” is exactly like my search. Google could have returned ads with a reordered phase as long as the meaning is maintained. However, if someone searched “low-carb easy diet plan” the ad would not be triggered – there can not be anything between the words in the phrase – it has to be exactly what’s in between the quotes.
Using phrase match types increases the likelihood of a click because your ad shows only when it matches the searcher’s phrase or close variations of that phrase. It also helps decrease unwanted impressions for search terms that don’t match your phrase and can increase your clickthrough rate (CTR).
Exact Match
With exact match, you can show your ad to customers who are searching for your exact keyword, or close variants of your exact keyword. Close variants include searches for keywords with the same meaning as the exact keywords, regardless of spelling or grammar similarities between the query and the keyword.
Whether someone is searching for “running shoes” or “shoes for running,” what they want remains the same; they’re looking for running shoes. Close variants of exact match keywords help you connect with people who are looking for your business—despite slight variations in the way they search—and reduces the need to build out exhaustive keyword lists to reach these customers.
With exact match, your ads may appear when someone searches for your keyword or close variants of your keyword. Close variants may include:
- Misspellings
- Singular or plural forms
- Stemmings (for example, floor and flooring)
- Abbreviations
- Accents
- Reordered words with the same meaning (for example, [shoes mens] and [mens shoes])
- Addition or removal of function words. Function words are prepositions (like in or to), conjunctions (like for or but), articles (like a or the), and other words that don’t impact the intent of a search. For example, [shoes for men] is a close variant of [men shoes] with the function word “for” removed.
- Implied words (for example, if your exact match keyword is [daydream vr headset], your ads may show on searches for “daydream headset” since “vr” is implied)
- Synonyms and paraphrases (for example, if your exact match keyword is [bathing suits], ads may also show on searches for “swimming suits”)
- Same search intent (for example, if your exact match keyword is [images royalty free], ads may also show on searches for “free copyright images”)
Of the four keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad, and can result in a higher clickthrough rate (CTR).
Example
To use the Exact Match type, you would enter the keyword with the ” [ ] ” symbols wrapped around your keyword.
[example keyword]
You can use exact match to limit who sees your ad to only those who search for your exact keywords or close variants of your exact keywords. These are the people who are likely most interested in what you offer. Keep in mind:
- Building and maintaining a list of exact match keywords, including choosing maximum bids for each keyword, requires a time commitment that can be difficult for advertisers with busy schedules.
- With exact match, you probably won’t receive as many impressions, clicks, or conversions as you would with other keyword matching options. However, the people that do see your ads might be more interested in your product or service.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Better targeting can put your ad in front of interested users and increase your return on investment (ROI).
This article explains how negative keywords work and when they might be useful. You can then learn more about negative keywords here.
Basic Tips for Building a Keyword List
Selecting the right keyword list for your campaign can help you show your ads to the right customers. Your keywords should match the terms your potential customers would use to find your products or services. Learn more about how to add, edit, and remove keywords.
This article explains some basic ways you can start building a good keyword list.
Think like a customer when you create your list
Write down the main categories of your business, and then write down the terms or phrases that might fall under each of those categories. Include terms or phrases your customers would use to describe your products or services.
Example
If you sell men’s athletic footwear, you might start off with some basic categories that customers would use, like “men’s sports shoes.” You can also add “men’s sneakers,” and “men’s tennis shoes,” if you find out these are commonly used terms for your products. Expand your list further by including your brand and product names.
Select specific keywords to target specific customers
Select more specific keywords that directly relate to your ad’s theme if you want to target customers who may be interested in a particular product. Using more specific keywords would mean that your ad only appears for terms that apply to your business. But keep in mind that if the keywords are too specific, you might not be able to reach as many people as you’d like.
Example
If you sell men’s athletic footwear, you might choose specific keywords like “men’s basketball shoes,” a type of shoe you offer. That way, for example, your ad would be eligible to appear when someone searches for these types of shoes or visits a website about basketball.
Select general keywords to reach more people
Select more general keywords if you’d prefer to reach as many people as possible. Keep in mind that you might find it difficult to reach potential customers when adding very general keywords because your ad could appear for searches that aren’t always related to your business. Also, more general keywords can be more competitive and may require higher bid amounts. Layer broad targeting with Smart Bidding, so machine learning technology can prioritize the best performing searches regardless of their match type. Learn more About Smart Bidding.
Test general keywords, and then decide which ones give you better results. No matter how general your keywords are, they should always be relevant to your ads and website.
Example
If you’re a large shoe store, you might choose a general keyword like “shoes.” That way, for example, your ad would be eligible to appear when someone searches for a wide variety of shoes or visits websites about fashion.
Group similar keywords into ad groups
To show more relevant ads to potential customers, group your keywords and ads into ad groups based on your products, services, or other categories. If multiple keywords match a given search term, Google chooses the keyword to serve based on the ranking outlined in this article about similar keywords in the same ad group.
Having the same keyword in different match types shouldn’t increase your costs or hurt performance in any way.
If instead you add all your keywords and ads to one ad group, a customer searching for “women’s evening shoes” may see your ad about “men’s tennis shoes.” Learn more about creating a new ad group.
Example
If you own a shoe store, you might create 2 ad groups: 1 for running shoes and 1 for evening shoes. Your ad group for running shoes could include ads with keywords like “running shoes” and “running sneakers.” Your ad group for evening shoes could include keywords like “evening shoes” and “dress shoes.”
That way, potential customers could see your ad about evening shoes when they search for “evening shoes”—not when they search for “running shoes.”
Consider close variants
We’ve made changes to exact match, phrase match, and broad match modifier so you can capture traffic from closely related variations of your keywords. You don’t have to add every variant of every keyword, as your ads will be eligible to serve on searches similar to the keywords you’re targeting.
Keep in mind, close variants don’t guarantee ads will serve every time someone searches for a variant of your keyword. To ensure your ad shows for all related terms, you can still add separate keywords for all variations. Learn more about close variants.
Choose the right keyword match types
Keyword match types help control which searches can trigger your ad. For example, you could use broad match to show your ad to a wide audience or you could use exact match to hone in on specific groups of customers. Learn more about keyword matching options.
This article explains how to choose the right match types for your ads.
Use a broad-to-narrow strategy
When choosing the appropriate match type for a keyword, we typically recommend using a broad-to-narrow strategy.
First, start off with broad match keywords to maximize the potential to show your ads on relevant searches. Broad match is the default type of keyword, so if you’ve already added keywords, chances are you don’t have to do anything special to make them broad match. Learn more about adding keywords.
Next, monitor your keywords’ performance over time. If you find that your ad shows up for too many irrelevant variations of your keywords, try adding negative keywords to specifically stop some of those irrelevant matches. You can also make your keyword match types more specific to narrow down your audience even more. Learn more about monitoring your ads and keywords.
Broad match works particularly well with Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding is a subset of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction—a feature known as “auction-time bidding”. If you’re using Smart Bidding on your Search campaigns, Google will automatically prioritize your keywords that are performing better in order to achieve your campaigns’ goals. Learn more About Smart Bidding.
See which search terms triggered your ads
Once your keywords have gathered impressions and clicks, see what people who saw your ads actually searched for with the “search terms” report. Learn more about understanding the search terms report.
Here are a few tips for using the information in the report:
- See how closely search terms are to your keywords. In the “Match type” column, see how search terms that triggered your ads match your keywords. Use this information to adjust your keyword match types. For example, if you use banana bread as a keyword, then you might see banana bread with “Exact” as the match type. This means that people who searched for the exact phrase “banana bread” saw your ad.
- See keyword ideas. Your ads may be triggered by terms that you hadn’t thought of. Add these terms as keywords.
- Get negative keyword ideas. If search terms that aren’t relevant trigger your ads, then add those terms as negative keywords.