help sorting big keyword lists

[powell1]

I'm having a little trouble figuring out the best way to work with big keyword lists. Let's say you have a list of keywords in the following format:

[service] [city] [stateFullName]
[service] [stateFullName]
[service] [city] [stateAbbreviaton]
[service] [stateAbbreviaton]
[budget][service] [city] [stateFullName]
[budget][service] [stateFullName]
[budget][service] [city] [stateAbbreviaton]
[budget][service] [stateAbbreviaton]
[budget] [modifier] [service] [city] [stateFullName]
[budget] [modifier][service] [stateFullName]
[budget] [modifier][service] [city] [stateAbbreviaton]
[budget] [modifier][service] [stateAbbreviaton]

etc. on until forever. Like 30k+ keywords. It becomes a rather large pain in the ass to sort and upload all of these. It also seems like they can be sorted 30k different ways. The adwords grouper doesn't seem to make logical groupings, so that's kind of out.

I guess the question is, what are you guys sorting by? Location, say with a different campaign for each state? Modifiers, like creating a group for "teen colostomy bag"? Budget words, like "cheap colostomy bag"? All of them? Then what do you do with "cheap senior colostomy bag arizona"? Maybe I'm just not seeing the easy way to sort them out, create small, targeted adgroups, write 20k ads, and get it all uploaded into 30 different adwords accounts that are limited to the number of campaigns and adgroups.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[chatmasta]

I wrote a tool to do something like this last year. Link in my sig.

 

[djrhue]

When I have a huge amount of keywords like you do I sort by number of words in the keyword. So basically I have 4 columns with 2,3,4,5 word keywords separated in tabs by their category or ad group.

It takes some time but in the end you are happy with sorting through it.

 

[ImagesAndWords]

I'm gonna sound like a broken record here (lol) but - again, I would start by breaking down your terms into groups by buyer mode.

If we stick with the colostomy bag niche... basically - ask yourself what keywords will be more used by people who don't know much about colostomy bags but are just starting out their search quest. They will get their own adgroup.

What keywords will be used by those who are already regular users but would like to know of a better brand or store? Another adgroup. What keywords will be used by those more interested in saving a buck than getting quality? More adgroups... etc. By looking over your keywords and their modifiers you should be able to get an idea of how they can be segmented to different types of searchers.

Who wants what - and how/why? The answer...your adgroups.

Also ask yourself - what keywords cater to quality of service vs. price? Make adgroups for each - with ads written in different wording for each (AND...different landing pages for each if you wanna go the extra mile for the extra $$)

And yes, then there are all the other modifiers, city, and state. I wouldn't go through the hassle of creating X different campaigns for geo-targeted cities and states.

Rather, use SpeedPPC (or the free Derek Beau version), and mass-produce your adgroups with root and branch keywords off of the cities and states. These will then go into your display URL and/or destination URL, and can be insterted into each ad AND landing page.

Saves a ton of work as far as creation and uploading. Hope this helps.