Organize Keywords into Tightly Themed AdGroups

Today I had the privilege of going through an account that we recently took over only to notice that there were around 50-100 keywords in each and every AdGroup.  The groups over the past while have been getting very low click through rates and higher costs across the whole account.  It’s not that hard to go into an account and pinpoint a few things that would help improve the overall quality of the account.

How to quickly improve a PPC account in a couple hours?

No, this isn’t a 5 min tip unless your account is 10 keywords long.  This is grunt work that takes a long time.  It has taken me 4 hours this morning to take the 200+ keywords and organize them into tightly themed AdGroups.  I personally don’t like to have more then four keywords per AdGroup. In many cases I have one keyword per AdGroup. This allows me to write ads specifically for the person that is searching that term.  When you have fifty keywords in one AdGroup, you will have to write a general ad for all the keywords in the AdGroup.  In this case, their AdGroup was called “General” very fitting considering it had so many keywords.

This isn’t the funnest thing to do in the world.  It takes a lot of time but I have seen a 1000x increase in account performance.  I’ve also been able to spot under performing groups and pause them quickly as to not waste money.  If you have a huge group, it will overwhelm you.  You will look at it an not really understand what’s working and what isn’t working.  When you have everything broken out you can push more money to keywords that are converting and making you money.

How Long Does a PPC account Re-Organization Take?

There are four Campaigns in this account with five different AdGroups.  Each AdGroup has around 100 keywords in it. Yuck.  I just re-organized two of the AdGroups and it took me a PPC expert around four hours.  It’s not something to take lightly or do a quick job.  Your account needs time and energy.  This full account should take around 12 hours or total time.  They spend around $1000/month in spend and will take around 12-15 hours to re-organize the account.

How Do I know if I need to Re-Organize my Account?

99% of accounts need this.  If you look in  your AdWords account and notice that each AdGroup has more then four keywords in it… You probably need an account re-organization and overhaul. Now, don’t get me wrong, not every account should have less than four keywords but I typically advise that under four will help you to organize better. Accounts with millions of keywords I feel should use systems to do this.  It will help them organize much easier and keep track of everything.  For everyone else, you probably need to organize it.  We at Maple North can help with this.  We are PPC expert who do this all day long.  Contact us today for some help on where to get started.