MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Most Frequently Asked AdWords Questions

A while back, I promised to answer any AdWords question that our users would send me. I am still going to go and do that, but it is going to take a little while since I got hundreds of questions via the blog and our newsletter.

In any case, one of the questions that I kept hearing again and again is:

“How many keywords should I ad per Ad Group?”

I see just about anyone that is new with AdWords struggling with this and just the other day, I was listening to a StomperNet video by Frank Kern and I was shocked that in the video even the advice that Frank Kern was giving was not what I would have recommended.

So, here is the rules that I follow each and every time I create a set of new Ad Group.

For example, here is what I did while I was building a keyword list for our new keyword tool www.WordButler.com. While I won’t go over the entire keyword list that I build, I will dive into a specific example to answer “how many keywords per Ad Group?”

So, lets pick the keyword phrase “keyword tool” as an example.

Step 1: Check the traffic. The phrase “keyword tool” is a very popular keyword phrase. According to Google’s keyword tool it gets over 90,500 searches per month.

So what do I do?

I create 1 Ad Group where I put only 1 keyword phrase into the Ad Group using exact match.

In other words, if the keyword phrase gets a lot of searches and is very important to you, then I would recommend to use exact match and create 1 Ad Group with only that 1 keyword.

Step 2: Now I use our keyword tool WordButler to build a comprehensive keyword list of all the searches that are done online that contain the keyword phrase “keyword tool” and I put all of these into Another Ad Group. In this case I found over 150 keyword phrases that contain the word “keyword tool” and I added all of them into a separate Ad Group.

Lets repeat - How many keywords per Ad Group?

• Step 1: I create an Ad Group with 1 keyword only using exact match
• Step 2: I create an Ad Group with all of the keywords that contain the root (in this case “keyword tool)

Lastly, I will then go deeper. If you go to Google’s keyword suggestions and look at the traffic estimates, you will see that there is lots of keywords that get over 10,000 searches per month.

keyword tool - 90,500

overture keyword tool - 9,900

keyword research tool - 8,100

keyword search tool - 8,100

keyword selector tool - 8,100

adwords keyword tool - 6,600

free keyword tool - 6,600

Since the above keyword phrases all get over 5,000 searches per month, I will repeat the same steps and create 2 Ad Groups for each of the above keyword phrase. The first will have only 1 keyword with exact match and the other will have all of the keywords search queries that I can find. I will start with broad match and then add phrase match down the line.

Here is another tip. Whatever you do…. NEVER ever add different keyword phrases into the same Ad Group. For example, I would never put “keyword tool” and “keyword software” into the same Ad Group. If you do that, then there is no way you can compete with the top guys out there because your Ads will never be very targeted.

I hope that helps and if you like to check out our new keyword tool you can do so here at www.WordButler.com

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike

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