The grouping of keywords in Google Ads has an enormous impact on the success or failure of a campaign. After some major changes, keyword grouping now works differently than it did a year ago. That’s why it’s important to stay up to date.

In this post, you’ll learn what has changed and how you should group your keywords in the new Google Ads environment.

That was the short general answer. In this post, I’ll show you in detail how to do the right keyword grouping for you and what to look out for. Here’s an overview:

What Are the Benefits of Well-Defined Keyword Groups?

By grouping your keywords in a good and well-thought-out way, you will benefit in many ways. Here is a brief overview:

• More relevant ads: by grouping your campaign keywords, you can create ads that are much more relevant later on. You can target the specific search query users much more precisely. This increases the likelihood that they will click on your ad.
  
  For example, if a user searches for “red leather jacket”, he will not feel addressed by a generic ad about jackets – but he will if the ad makes clear that one click will take him directly to a selection of red leather jackets.

• Better quality factor and lower CPC: Google’s entire business model is based on the fact that we as users find exactly what we are looking for. For this reason, Google itself puts a lot of emphasis on ad relevance.
  
  The ad relevance, together with the expected click-through rate (CTR) and the landing page experience, determines the quality factor of your ad. Ads with high quality are preferred by Google and rewarded with a lower CPC.
  

• Easier optimization: optimization is all about avoiding scatter losses. You have to find out where you are spending money unnecessarily. If you have divided your keywords into well-defined groups, you can later easily tell which search queries bring you money and which ones you should rather not bid on.

As you can see, keyword grouping is not only an organizational issue but also leads to more successful and cheaper campaigns in the end.

The advantages are obvious, but in practice, it is not always easy. Therefore, I will try to give you concrete recommendations for action.

What criteria should you use to group keywords?

The goal of the grouping is to divide the keywords according to the respective search intent. Therefore, ask yourself: “What does the user really want when he searches for these words in Google?“

For each distinct user intent, you should create an ad group. This is often referred to as Keyword Theme.

What is a Keyword Theme?

A Keyword Theme is a group of related search queries that share a common search intent. That’s the dry definition. But what does it mean in concrete terms?

Let’s stay with the example above: you run a fashion business and want to promote your jackets. You sell leather jackets, denim jackets and winter jackets. The individual jackets also differ in the characteristics: Color, size, price, and target group.

In addition, there are various additional words that say something about the intent of a search query (“price”, “buy”, “cheap”, “best”).

A keyword theme could then be, for example, the following:

• Buy jacket

• Red leather jacket ladies

• Best winter jacket men

You see, there are many combinations and each has a different search intent.

Keyword grouping: step-by-step guide

Now let’s look at how to collect, group and optimize keywords for Google search campaigns from start to finish.

1. Create a keyword list

First, you need a base of keywords before you start grouping them. A very helpful and free tool for keyword research is the Google Keyword Planner.

You can easily access it via the Google Ads interface under Tools and Settings > Planning > Keyword Planner.

In the Keyword Planner, you can either have your landing page scanned and the most important terms of the page automatically added or you enter your initial terms yourself. You will usually get better results if you enter your terms manually.

For the jacket example above, you can enter the generic terms:

Google will then give you a long list of related search queries that you can include in your list. The additional information (e.g. search volume, competition or click price) that Google provides is also very helpful here.

Go through the list and select the keywords that exactly match your campaign and the products you want to promote. Even if the search volume often looks tempting, you should not include keywords that are too generic (example: “coat”).

Once you have selected all relevant keywords, you can add them to a plan and export it as a CSV or Google Sheet.

The key here is: Quality over quantity. Due to the changes in Google Ads, you no longer need so many keywords per ad group.

2. Define top-level keywords and additional words

The next step is to bring order into the keyword list. That is, you examine your list for top-level terms and possible additional words that change the search intention.

It is best to separate the top-level terms and the additional words in different columns. Then you can group them in the next step.

In our case, the top-level terms would be the product types that we have already defined above:

• Leather jacket
• Denim jacket
• Winter jacket

Possible additional words could be e.g. the color, the size or the target group (for men, for women, for children).

It is important that you keep only the highly relevant additional words.

Other additional words – orientational terms

In search engine marketing (SEM) there are well-known additional words, which give a clear idea about the search intent of the users. There are different classifications for this. Here is an overview of the most common:

• Transactional / Commercial: Users want to perform a specific action, e.g. buy.
  
  Common additional words:

• buy

• order

• Discount, cheap, price

• download, download

• rent, borrow

• best
  

• Informational: users want to inform themselves or find a specific piece of information. Often before they make a purchase decision:
  
  Frequent additional words:

• Comparison

• Experience, Review

• Test

• Instruction

• How
  

• Navigational: users want to find something – whether digital (website, app, etc.) or analog (places, cities, stores, etc.)
  
  Common additional words:

• Where

• Address

It is always worth examining the keywords in your list according to the search intent. Be on the lookout for signal words like the ones mentioned above.

3. Classify top-level keywords and additional words in keyword themes

Once you have organized your keyword list, you can now define your keyword themes. Each top-level term alone (e.g. leather jacket) and in combination with an additional word (e.g. red leather jacket) forms a Keyword Theme.

Of course, you should not include every combination, but only those that make sense for your campaign. Especially if you have a limited budget, you should rather concentrate on the rough distinctions.

For example, a distinction between “leather jackets men” and “leather jackets women” is in most cases more important than a distinction by color.

4. Group keywords by keyword theme

Now to the grouping of the keywords. If you have your Keyword Themes ready, you now only have to group the keywords from your list by Keyword Theme. And you’re done! 🥳

Each keyword group can now become an ad group in a Google search campaign. Now, to take advantage of the thoughtful grouping, you need to create matching ads and link to the most relevant landing page.

After grouping, it is up to you to decide whether to include all keyword groups in the same campaign or to create multiple campaigns. This could be the case if you have specific budgets or you want to use different bidding strategies.

Once you have started the campaign(s), it is important that you keep checking your keyword grouping. To do this, you should regularly look at the report on the search terms.

I hope I was able to help you with this post. I wish you much success in grouping your keywords!

Work smart, not hard – Clicks in Mind