Choosing the RIGHT Keywords for Google Ads in 2023

Are you spending hours upon hours desperately trying to find the right keywords so that you're going to have the most profitable Google Ads campaign? And then even after you found the right keywords, you then even taking more time painstakingly going through and breaking out those keywords into single keyword ad groups, or skags as we like to call them. If that's you. The sad news is, is that you are actually wasting your time. And this is because as Google has changed the way that its keyword match types work, we also need to change how we go through the process and complete our keyword research. Now I want to make it very, very clear that keyword research is still a very, very important action that you need to take if you want to see success in any of your keyword based campaigns like your search campaigns, your shopping campaigns or your performance max campaigns. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to take you through the process of how I go about and complete my keyword research for my campaigns in 2023. Now as I said, the good news is, is that this process actually is a lot faster and less complicated than what it used to be. Because I remember before Google made these changes at the end of 2021, that completing a keyword research for a client could take up to three or four hours. And that's because you had to really finally comb through the data to really find what was going to be the best performing keyword, break them down into lots of different ad groups, including those single keyword ad groups. And as I've said before on this channel, that is just not required anymore. And right now let me show you the first thing you need to do because you still are starting in Google Ads Keywords Planner. And let me show you the first step of this process. Now when you're in Google Ads, the first place that you want to go into is up into your tools and settings and then into your Keyword Planner. Now if you've got currently got access to the new Google Ads Dashboard, you'll actually find find this section over here in the sidebar and it'll be under the Planning tab. And then you still need to go into your Keyword Planner and if you get lost at all, you can just go into the search bar and type in keyword and then you'll see Keyword Planner pop up. So regardless of whether you're using the new or the old dashboard, you will be able to easily find the Keyword Planner. From there we want to go into Discover new keywords and then you need to do two things. Firstly you want to be adding in the website and then you want to be adding in some core keywords that you're going to be using. Okay, so what I've done here, I've gone ahead and I've added in our website and then I've also put in a collection of seven different keywords that I want to start to get some more data. Now once you've done that, you just go through and click get results. And what this will do for you is that this will do a couple of things. So firstly you can actually see here we've got the actual keywords that we provided. Then it gives us some different keyword ideas which is based from the initial keywords we provided. Now what it also is starting to. You may not see this but Google is starting to roll this out and this just some of the extra automations that are coming in through campaign planning. So we can start to see whether we want to focus on brands or non brands. Then we also wanted to do, let's just say for example we wanted to take out the resort keywords. It would add some extra refinements in there and then from there say for example I wanted to get rid of holiday homes for this context we can add in some extra refinements there. And you can see from here this is taking us of 113 keyword ideas. We're already down to 100. Let's just say I want to take out anything that's got to do with the W. We don't offer five bedroom villas, we've only got one and two. So we'll take them out. So you can see from there you able to quickly start to refining it from here. Once you've done that you can close that down. And then from there what I start to look at as I look at three other core areas. The first area that I look at is this average monthly searches graph and what we're looking at here is we're just looking at is this growing or is this sort of a newer term. There is also some different seasonality in here as well and this is where it becomes important with this three month change and it lets you know whether the search trend for this keyword is increasing or decreasing. So that's the first thing that I look at. The other thing that we look at in through here is I look at the common. Now you get three different scores here of low, medium and high. And what the real sweet spot is that you're looking at here. Is are there any search terms that have a high search volume that are also increasing and then they also have a low or medium competition. Now for something like this, this would be a good one to look at best villas in Seminyak with a private pool. The reason being is yes, the average monthly searches are low, but it is definitely growing and it's still only got a medium competition and then something else as well. For example, this one bedroom villa, Seminyak, once again, the average monthly searches, it's grown 50% from the previous year and it's only got a medium competition. So that's the first thing you start to look at when you want to decide the different keywords you want to select. The other part that you want to be looking at, you want to be looking at the top of bid low range which is your positions three or four and then your top of bid high range which is your first two positions. But one thing I do want to say with all of this is that I do find a lot that people get really bunkered down by the different data in here, especially around the cost per click. But what I do want to make clear is that these are very much trends which are based on what has happened previous. So when you actually go to start your campaign, what you really see in terms of your CPC could be very, very different. And that's different on a number of factors from the actual competition which is happening right now, versus your own ad ranks and your quality scores. So it comes down to your ad quality, your landing page. There is a lot of different data points that really go into let you know what this CPC bid range is going to be. So what I want to do from here is that the next step is that you then go through and select the keywords that you want. And I'll go through and do that now. And when you're making that selection me personal, I stay away from these really large trended monthly searches with smaller keywords. And the reason, for example like Bali Villa, because yes, that is a high volume, but there's just so many different variations. It could be there, it could be a large five bedroom villa which we only have one or two. It could be people looking at doing long term rents, so people wanting to rent it for a year, we only offer short term, that's the same as like rent Bali Villa. So what I start to do is I basically go down and look at the keyword terms which I think are the most relevant for us. Okay. And then once you've got those keywords selected, the Next part do like to look at from here is I do want to look at once again the CPC range. As I said before, it's not something that you take as gospel because you know it will change, but you do look at that range and we can see from there is that our average CPC is going to be in and around that $3. Now that is going to be very, very important because that then lets us know that for our initial budget, we'll want that initial budget to be somewhere about 10 times the highest CPC. So for $3 that would be around about at least $30 a day. And the reason for that is because to be able to get enough data in your Google Ads account, you do want making sure that you're getting around about 300 clicks a month. So then you break that down and you need that 10 clicks a day. So once you've got those, you then go through and add it into a campaign ad group. So then when you go there, you've got your saved keywords, you add keywords to create a plan. Then from here you go to your keyword plan and you want to go through and you want to save this down in either to a CSV or a Google sheet. We'll just do a Google sheet and then once you've got that Google sheet, just go through and open that sheet. And then from there you want to do a little bit of organization, which I'll do right now and then I'll show you the results. And then what you've got here is you can see I've created this down and we've got three different campaigns. The way that we've broken this down is that we've got our one bedroom villa campaign, our two bedroom villa campaign and then our Villagener campaign. But what you can notice in each of these campaigns I've only got one ad group. And the reason for that is because, you know, historically we would have generally broken this out to in the one bedrooms, I would have separated out the Barley and also the Seminyak only ad groups. But because of the way that this now works, Google would target these alt together the same too. With the Villa General we would have before probably had two or three different ad groups. You know, we would have had hotels in Seminyak with a private pool being separate to best villas. And the reason why we've got these in the same ad group now is because as we've mentioned before, with Google's keyword targeting they're going to be triggering as well because it's the same Meaning so it is much better just to have them all in the same ad group. The reason why I've broken it out into three different campaigns though is so that we can control the ad spending and also too so we can control some different bidding targets in regards to the different ad spending. For us here, we've more one bedroom villas than we do have our two bedroom villas. So that's why we want to be able to separate this budget out. And then also for our general terms, we generally find that they don't target as highly, but there are some more high volumes. So we separate this out so that when it comes into our campaign bidding and also our different target roas targets that we want to be setting, these are generally going to be higher for the more specific ones as opposed to the general terms. So that's the process I follow in Google in order to find my keywords. And then remember, we go through and we download that into a Google sheet and then we add in our segmentation around our different campaigns and ad groups. And what I want to show you there is that that whole process only took about 10 minutes as opposed to previously it taking multiple hours. And the reason for that is because rather than selecting, you know, sometimes 200 or 300 different keywords and arranging those, you're just looking for those core keywords that have a growing search trend and then you just want to break them out into your core different campaigns. For this business that we were doing the research for, we had some really, really specific reasons to break them into different campaigns. But there would be nothing wrong with having all of those keywords in one campaign with three different ad groups. Remembering that you only want one keyword theme in each ad group. And then the reason for why you would break some different ad groups into different campaigns is if you want to have better control over the budgeting or over the bidding strategies that you want to use. So now I want to change tact a little bit and I really want to take you through how go about and you build out your keyword list from here because as you saw, we only had about three or four. I think in one of those ad groups we had about six or seven different keywords. So for that total campaign we were starting with only 16 keywords. And there is nothing wrong with having an ad group starting with only two or three or sometimes even four or five different keywords. And the way that I would structure that is that I would have one or two broad match keywords that have more keywords in them. So we're looking at about four or five different words in them. And a perfect example for that is that in my one bedroom villa Seminyak ad group, we had keywords around one bedroom villa Seminyak and then we had other keywords which were targeting one bedroom villa Seminyak with a private pool or holiday villas in Seminyak with a private pool. They're the ones that I would keep as broad match. And then my one bedroom Seminyak, I would have that as an exact match. And the reason for that is because with broad matching keywords, remember that Google is now targeting the meaning of that keyword, not the individual wor. And that's the biggest difference that's come through in Google Ads is that Google Ads is now not targeting the keywords you enter, it's targeting the meaning of the whole phrase. So with broad match keywords, what you want to do is that you want to have a longer tail keyword phrase because that gives Google more context of the type of keywords you wanted to trigger. Then if you have some exact match keywords like one bedroom Villa Seminyak, that's putting a little bit of a tighter targeting on it. But you can see some more specific data on that individual keyword and then you can make the decision of whether you want to continue bidding on that keyword or you want to pause it. So once you've got that initial setup, this then comes to the next important step of you reviewing your search term insights so that you can increase the number of keywords in your Google Ads campaigns. So right now let's jump in and I'll show you how to go through and complete your keyword review. Now, straightaway in here you'll notice that we are in the new dashboard. So what you want to do is you want to go into your campaign, we want to be going into our search campaign. And then from there you want to be going into your insights and reports and you want to be going into your search terms. Now if you're still on the old dashboard, when you go into a search campaign, you're going to find this data under insights and reports and then in search terms and then you can get all of your individual search term data there. Let's go back into the new dashboard. So where we are from here, once again we're in insights and reports and then search terms. And what you want to be doing from here is you want to be doing two things is that you're going through and you're reviewing all of the actual user search terms which have triggered your ads. And you want to be looking for two things. Firstly, you want to be looking at is there any keywords which are not relevant that you want to stop your ad triggering for? Now I've already got hundreds and hundreds of negative keywords, so we're not going to be seeing a lot here which are not targeted. But at the start there was a lot that we had to target. Now that is an example in here because that is for a different brand that sells a different type of product. So we would click that and then we would add that as a negative keyword. So I then added that as a negative keyword. Now the other thing that we want to be doing in here is we want to be looking at are there any keywords which are really highly targeted for our product? Now this is running a earmuff which can also be used in specific cases. So we can go through in here and we can click this and then we can add them as an actual keyword. And then from there you can just make sure that they're going into the right ad group, which these are, and then you can click save. And that's the way that you can build out the number of keywords that are in your ad groups. And the reason for why this is also important and why you want to have a broad match keyword. And you always want to be going through and checking your search term audit so you can add in those extra negative keywords. And also there's extra keywords that you want to target as an exact keyword phrase. And the reason for why that's so important is because up to 15% of all Google searches are now new in that they've never been searched before. And that figure is only going to skyrocket in the weeks and months to come. And the reason for that is because very, very soon Google will be expanding out their chat based search where different search and shopping ads will appear in those chat searches. What's that going to mean is there's going to be a rise in new types of searches because people just won't be completing one phrase searches. They'll be doing it more in a conversational manner. And that is why once again, those broad match keywords with multiple words in them is going to be really, really powerful because it's going to give Google greater context into the exact type of products and services that you're wanting to sell. Now, I know that is a lot of information and there is so much more that is coming down the line and that's why it's important to stay up to date with what is happening not only right now in Google Ads, but what is happening in the future. And that's why in my paid community I released a master class called the future of Google Ads and your business. And this gives you some great information which I don't share here on YouTube. And if you'd like to get access to that, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below and it would be great to share that extra information with you. Thank you for joining me. My name is Aaron young. I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Once again, if you want to go through and watch that masterclass about the future of Google Ads and your business, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. But if you want to stay right here on YouTube and find out more about what's coming up in Google Ads, I want you to go through and watch this video right here. Thank you again. See you next time.