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The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
#1 Secret to Improving Broad Match Keywords (Episode 503)
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Foreign. Welcome to the Faith Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to tell you how you can vastly improve your broad match keywords in your Google Ads search campaigns. I have some documentation to share with you straight from Google about how broad match keywords work, how the matching system works, and there might be something that is right there in black and white and you don't realize that it's hurting you if you're not doing this. So I'm gonna go through that right at the top of the show gonna be the entire episode is gonna be devoted to that. Before I do, I want to tell you about my favorite software. That is an exciting announcement that I've talked about just recently. It just happened. Optio.com PSP recently launched a new feature that has integrated AI into their tool. And I talked about Optio for years about how it was a recommendation system. It was great to help you get more done. But now Optio has become a power tool for multiple channels. Not just Google Ads anymore. LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok. This information is now gathered and you can analyze your data quickly through AI. You can chat with your data to get account performance, health checks, audit your ad copy, generate ads, all kinds of things. There's tons of things that you can do now. The tool has grown expansively to become a massive power tool for Google Ads optimization and beyond. So if you'd like to get exclusive access to this new Opteo tool that they're giving exclusively to listeners of this podcast, you can do so@optio.com PSP it's a 28 day free trial to try the tool for free. O p t e o.com PSP use the chat box to let them know that you heard about it here and they'll give you that special offer. Okay, so let's get into it. Today's episode is going to jump right off with some Google documentation and you can find this documentation yourself. You just search for Google's actual page that talks about how keywords are matched to the user's search. Okay, so there's a page, it's been around for a long time, it's changed over the years and now this is what it looks like in 2026. We're going to skip everything except for one specific bullet point section that is relevant for discussing broad match keywords. And I'm going to read you straight from the source what they say Google documentation says about broad match keywords to deliver relevant matches. This match type, Broad match may also take into account the the User's recent search activities, the content of the landing pages and assets, and other keywords in an ad group to better understand keyword intent. So to restate, there are three bullet points that Google says to deliver relevant matches, right? So in order for Google to match your keyword to relevant searches happening on Google, they're going to use the user's recent search activities. That one we can't do anything about, right? I cannot engineer searches based on a series of searches. So that one is out of our control. The next one is the content of the landing pages and assets. That's something important, but we're not going to talk about it today. It's not the focus of today's episode. In fact, the last one is what's important. Other keywords in an ad group are used to better understand your keyword intent. That is the secret right here, I'm telling you. The big takeaway is this. If you're using broad match keywords, put those keywords in separate ad groups. Okay? Why? Why would you do that? Well, Google gives us the explanation right there in the documentation. It helps to demystify, disambiguate vague keywords. Okay? So, for example, the word Apple, when placed by itself, it has absolutely no context. There's no context to the word Apple. And Google could match a lot of things to the word Apple. But if you match the word Apple with keywords in the same ad group that, say, Apple laptop, MacBook repair and Apple MacBook, things like that, suddenly that keyword Apple, according to Google's documentation, would have a different matching pattern than just the keyword by itself. Also, the key if you had a different theme, Apple Orchard, Apple picking, suddenly that same keyword Apple would then match to different searches because of the context the keywords in that same ad group. So the surrounding keywords in an ad group help Google infer whether Apple means the company or the fruit. And this is a huge factor for those of you that are struggling with getting your keywords to match properly. Right. If you're using broad match keywords, which Google calls the most comprehensive match type, we're not going to get into that whole thing, but it is by far the most comprehensive, if you consider comprehensive to be a good thing. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes you don't want to be comprehensive and collect all the searches. But if you are using broad match, you can greatly improve your performance by breaking them up in ad groups. And I'm going to give you examples of what that looks like, because many of you might be using ad groups that are not consistent. They don't have a lot of logic. So we're go through and talk about how to have a good breakup of ad groups. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you multiple examples from the same industry about different ways to break up your ad groups. You might think, well, Chris, I have no idea the purpose behind an ad group or why I would put one keyword in one ad group and another keyword in another ad group. How can I possibly apply this when I don't really understand the context or the purpose behind an ad group? So I could preach all about what ad groups are really about and what they're for, but the fact is you really, I think learn more by hearing examples. So for today's topic, I'm going to use one, let's say one industry, one service to explain all of these. And I think you'll better understand how it could apply to your Google Ads account. So I'm going to use the industry or the service project management software, right? So this is, there's lots of that out there and it's something that can cover all these different scopes of breaking out different ad groups and cover the gambit of the application. So the first example of how you might break up different ad groups for a service of project management software would be by feature. Okay, so the person searching and looking for a feature. So the example of what that would look like is somebody who's interested in task management software, right? They didn't use the term project management software, they were looking for task management software. So the keywords in there were would be task management software, task tracking software, something like that. Okay, so that's a feature. So another feature would be team collaboration software. Another feature would be project planning software. Okay, so this first example is where you take the feature and so this would be user facing features, right? This is not something that is based on anything other than with how the people see the use and the application of your service or software. So you might think, well Chris, I, I don't have features, right? My, my company, my, my service, my, whatever doesn't really break out by features. We just do the same thing for everyone. There's not features features to it. Okay, so in that example, service might be more appropriate. So same industry project management software but broken out by service. So a service ad group breakout might be project management software demo, project management software trial project, project management software implementation implementation or project management software consulting or project management software support. Okay, so in this example it's the same kind of thing. Everybody's still looking for project management software, but you've delineated between the purpose of how they plan to use it. Okay, so this is an example of service and this one's a stretch, this one's harder to do. But I wanted to try and use something that could be applied in different ways for the same company, the same type of industry. Of course this would be applied very differently. But so far we've discussed feature breakouts and service breakouts. So hope you see the difference here. Feature is user facing, right? So that's how they plan to use it and the purpose and how they want to use your service, your software, your product. Service example could be basically the same kind of theme, but how they intend to work with it. It's a demo, it's a trial. We need help with the implementation of it, we need consulting around it, or we need support around it. Okay, so two subtle differences. And before you say, well, I'm just going to do everything, I'm going to do feature, I'm going to do service, I'm going to do all of it. I don't advise it because we should stop here and state that I do think there is a point in your Google Ads building and optimization process when you can over, you can have too much complexity that leads to really a downfall in the account. If your differentiation between these ad groups is so thin and so difficult to really manage, so that you can't really tell where one ad group starts and another one begins, I don't think that you should apply to that kind of precision or that kind of complexity I should say would be more appropriate. I think that you should build ad groups that makes the most sense so that you end up with maybe 2, 3, 5 AD groups. I don't think that 50, 100, 200 AD groups is appropriate when you're just getting started at some point down the optimization path. There might be a point when perhaps with enough spend, it makes sense to delineate between many, many different ways of searching. But for those of you that are just struggling to get better quality traffic to get your broad match keywords to work better, I think two, three ad groups might be more appropriate. So let's move to another example. This example is based on the intent, okay. And this is more of how the person's searching for it. Okay, so how they're going to be applying the software in their, in their process. So the first one is just project management software. They're you know, doing things like the Keywords would be something like software for project management, project manager software, project management software. Right. Kind of the core terms. You're going to get a lot there. Then the intent of the search would change. And another ad group might be research intent. You know, they intend to, their intention is to do some research and trying to compare and find different project management software. So it might be something like best project management software. So the keywords would be top product management software, best product management software, best tools for product managers. See, there's a slight difference in the intent of what their search is about, what their focus is. Another possible difference would be project management tools. Right. So this person's doing a little bit of research and trying to find something. Someone else that might be more qualified might be someone who's doing a search around Agile, Agile project management software. So someone who doesn't just want project management software that's very structured and rigid. They want something that is easily customizable, something that is easily applied to a variety of different situations and has a lot of options. Okay. And then last example of the intent, the purpose behind how they plan to use or interact or do their search would be enterprise project management software. So someone who plans to use this across hundreds and thousands of different things, very highly scalable, very detailed, high end type of software. So keywords might be something like enterprise product management software, product management platform, enterprise. Right. So there, there's a lot of options here that, that would fit. So hopefully you can understand. We've done three so far. Feature focused, service focused, intent focused. And I have one more that I want to go through real quick. I want to remind you about Optio. They are my one and only sponsor. I don't ask you guys to do anything. You get this, you get hundreds and hundreds of hours of me talking about a very specialized Google Ads expertise. And all I ask is that you check out Google Ads Management through Opteo. It's a wonderful tool and they are offering an amazing option for you to try their new super powerful Upgrade for free for 28 days. Optio.com PSP. So this last one that I want to talk about is focused on something completely different. You say, well Chris, I've listened to all of those. None of those really apply. Give me something that doesn't require, you know, kind of a, an outside thought process that adds complexity and I have to think about stuff. Let's just go with real simple. How can I break out these keywords just based on the words themselves? Okay, now this is not something I necessarily recommend. I think this could lead to a lot of complexity and a lot of issues, but maybe it's right for you. And, you know, that's the whole point here, is experiment, test, see what you can find. This example would be a skag example. Single keyword ad group. That's what skag stands for, skag. So a skag example would be, instead of basing it on the feature or the intent of the user, instead it's just based on syntax. The word is different. So one ad group might be product management software. Another ad group might be product management platform. Another ad group might be product management tool. See, there's, there's subtle differences here and there's not really a guarantee that Google is going to respect that because, you know, these are broad match keywords we're talking about here. But you would want to have each one of these wouldn't really adhere to the skag methodology. You'd want to have multiple keywords in this ad group. Product management tool and then tool for product management. Right, because the point is to have multiple keywords in the ad group. So I don't want you to actually truly create a skag ad group. There needs to be more than one keyword in here or otherwise. We're completely missing the point. So you essentially create ad groups based on the syntax of the word itself and then kind of repeat that word in different ways to try and implement some kind of matching system that Google might respect a little bit better. So if you're finding issues with Google not matching your terms appropriately, if your term is just kind of going off into left field and you just want kind of a quick and dirty approach, you can try something based on the skag system. Some, some more examples might be Agile product management software, product planning software, Enterprise product management software. These are all different ways that you can essentially cover different things that, you know, everybody's going to be searching in subtle different ways and then break them up in, into the essential syntax and meaning of the words themselves rather than themes and intent and feature and service and things like that. Okay, so little shorter episode for today, but I wanted to get that out. I wanted to share something that could be incredibly important for many of you because I find more and more people are using broad match keywords because that's really where Google's pushing. That's where, that's what Google wants people to do. Because it, you know, it's more quote, unquote, comprehensive. And maybe this method will help you derive more value from your searches that you're getting. So next week I plan on answering some questions from listeners, so if you'd like to participate, participate in that. You can send me an email paid search podcastmail.com I always check my emails and reply back whenever I plan to answer them on the episode. So you won't miss your episode then. So send that email paid search podcastmail.com and I will answer a question on the air. I appreciate you guys reaching out to me. Chrishaefer.com if you'd like like help with your Google Ads, management coaching consulting. However I can help find me@chrishaeffer.com otherwise catch you guys right here next week.