Keywords for best content network targeting?

[bcc423]

This is for the content network only.

I'll make up an imaginary niche.
Let's say I want to target a theme "eating vegetables" in the content network.
This is a part of a larger campaign, of which "eating vegetables" is just a small part.

I have an ad group specifically for targeting pages about eating vegetables.

Which way to pick keywords is better?

Should I just create an ad group with:

eating vegetables
benefits of eating vegetables
importance of eating vegetables
eating more vegetables
eating your vegetables

(and maybe a few other keywords)

Or is it better to create a large ad group (which is still tightly targeted to "eating vegetables"), like:

make eating vegetables
like eating vegetables
eating more fruits and vegetables
eating your vegetables
eating vegetables and fruits
eating more vegetables
eating fruits and vegetables
eating vegetables in general
pattern by eating vegetables
example by eating vegetables
simply by eating vegetables
eating vegetables fruits
eating vegetables for instance
eating vegetables for breakfast
health eating vegetables
benefits eating vegetables
healthy eating vegetables
resistant to eating vegetables
alternative to eating vegetables
used to eating vegetables
reward for eating vegetables
not eating vegetables
prevalence of eating vegetables
message of eating vegetables
benefit of eating vegetables
healthy effects of eating vegetables
effects of eating vegetables
habit of eating vegetables
importance of eating vegetables
benefits of eating vegetables
eating vegetables

(and a lot more keywords that contain "eating vegetables")


Please don't tell me to split it up. I'm not talking about that.
I can take any phrase and come up with hundreds more keywords.
So splitting up would result in the same question: is adding a few keywords enough to define a theme or is it better to add a lot of keywords with the same seeds?


From my tests, I see it working well both ways. But I'm not sure which is better.

Adding a lot of keywords is eaisier because it's mostly automated. But it has its downsides.
Adding fewer takes more time because I need to assign a human to only pick the most "common" phrases from the list. But I'm worried that I might be missing out of some traffic if I don't add as many keywords as I can find.

A few days ago, I started a new promotion and mined up 70903 unique keywords for a niche.
When sorted into ad groups, I ended up having total 122009 keywords (with some appearing in more than one ad group).
A total of 16311 ad groups.

It took 3 accounts to hold those keywords. Thankfully, MMC and Adwords Editor make it easier to manage.

But still, I don't want to deal with such amount of keywords. I would rather have 20000 or so keywords with only one account per promo/product/project.

Additionally, it takes longer for large campaigns to get fully reviewed and matched to the publisher pages in the content network.
And of course, I don't want to put any more strain on Google's systems than I need to.

I tried getting an answer from Google, but ended up getting sent to the same old help pages, that don't answer this specific question.

So does anyone know?

 

[harry1970]

add lots of words with the same seed keyword. just make sure your adgroups have no more than 50 keywords as google only takes into account the first 50.

don't have so many adgroups and keywords for 1 campaign though. maximum keywords per campaign should be 5k. if you add too many google can't sort them out quickly enough so your account gets clogged. go for smaller uploads but submit them frequently and google can handle it better.

 

[johnysc430]

yes definitely harry knows his shit when it comes to content network, he's probably run 87,000 content campaigns.

 

[bcc423]

Harry, I know about the 50 keywords per ad group for content theme matching, but for some reason, some of my best ad groups have over 50 keywords.

And when I asked Google, they said the system picks the 50 "best" keywords. The rep didn't know what "best" means exactly, but he speculated it's the 50 top keywords with closes match or best quality score out of all of them.

In any case, I don't think it would hurt, but I agree that there is no reason to add more than 50 keywords into one ad group on purpose.

As for 5k keywords per campaign, is that for one upload session or in total?

If total, what's a good amount of keywords to upload at once? And how long should I wait between uploads?

What about the number of ad groups per campaign? What's the max to use?


Also, is there any reason not to max out the total number of keywords in the account?
I think it's somewhere close to 50k, unless you ask for an increase. Is there a reason not to upload that many but instead use more smaller accounts?

 

[bcc423]

One more thing, do you think adding keywords like this help?

eating vegetables for
eating vegetables because
like eating vegetables

and so on.

Not complete phrases, but they do occur on pages with AdSense blocks. So does it make sense to add them too?

 

[Rose.fire]

What about the number of ad groups per campaign? What's the max to use?

Ad groups..... you can give as many as Ad Groups per campaign, but with 50 keywords, as Google take only 50 keywords.

 

[Rose.fire]

One more thing, do you think adding keywords like this help?

eating vegetables for
eating vegetables because
like eating vegetables

and so on.

Not complete phrases, but they do occur on pages with AdSense blocks. So does it make sense to add them too?

Yes you can. But think as a user what would a user look for if he/she types in such keywords. Of course those type of keywords give results and occur on pages, but you hardly find users typing these type of words(incomplete phrases). so go for complete phrases/keywords like eat vegetables, vegetables for health, vegetables for fitness, veggies for health, eating veggies, eating vegetables because of health, eating vegetables because of fitness, etc,...

 

[miketyson]

My name is Mike Tyson. I am a new comer and would like to develop my skills regarding back links improvement.

 

[prince]

My name is Mike Tyson. I am a new comer and would like to develop my skills regarding back links improvement.

I'm so scared. Please don't bite my ear off.


BANHAMMER MOTHERFUCKER!

 

[ImagesAndWords]

And...some more content network tips.

Let's say I want to target a theme "eating vegetables" in the content network. This is a part of a larger campaign, of which "eating vegetables" is just a small part.

Both of your suggested keyword lists may give you some targeted traffic, but your approach is based around adding prefixes or suffixes to the same root keyword "eating vegetables".

This is an approach suitable for search campaigns, but not really for content. When deciding on keywords for a content adgroup, try to think in terms of making an adgroup for a certain sub-group of your demographic.

In other words - focus more on WHO should be seeing ads from this adgroup (by telling Google what sorts of pages you wanna be featured on, according to your keywords) - and not so much on just slight variations all containing the same root keyword.

So for "eating vegetables"...let's say you're promoting an offer for a free 1-year supply of veggies. For this adgroup, we then wanna ask ourselves:

1) What types of people will be more likely to be interested in this offer and give us conversions?
2) What sorts of websites do these people frequently visit?
3) What keywords are most prominent on those websites?

The answer might be a list more like this:

cooking
vegetable
vegetables
veggies
vegetarian
vegan
eating
eating vegetables
steaks
sirloin
carrots
broccoli
cucumber
cauliflower
boiling
recipes
recipe
steaming

With a negative keyword list such as this, to supplement it:

-growing
-grow
-grows
-harvesting
-harvest
-planting
-plant
-plants
-farming
-farm
-farms
-candy
-cookies
-dining
-restaurants

(assuming you don't want your ads on sites devoted to restaurant guides, farming, or recipes for sweets)

You could get a hunch of what sites you could be placed on, by using the free Adwords Digger (requires an opt-in but you can opt-out once you've downloaded it). This would give you an idea of whether or not you're on the right track with your content adgroup keyword selection.

Another great resource is Google's new Ad Planner.

If you have such a massive list of keywords for your campaign as a whole, I would definitely try to weed out a bunch, and start out with grouping the most obvious ones. Chances are, your big list has tons of 3 or 4+ word longtails, and it will be a nightmare to write out negative keywords for them all. Remember - ALL content keywords are considered broad match, and phrase/exact is ignored!

So to save yourself some work, start out with the most obvious 1 or 2-keyword words and spend your time focusing on WHO and WHERE, instead of generating variations off of one root keyword.

Some other posts I wrote:
http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/41684-question-about-content-network.html#post381121
http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate...t-network-question-anoter-one.html#post394188
http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate...ent-network-vs-search-network.html#post378077

 

[prince]

And when I asked Google, they said the system picks the 50 "best" keywords. The rep didn't know what "best" means exactly, but he speculated it's the 50 top keywords with closes match or best quality score out of all of them.

Now this is interesting. For those of you who keep saying you need to have 50 keywords per adgroup, have you actually tested this or you just did it because you heard someone from somewhere (ppc-coach/digitalpoint/amitmehta/gauher/whatever) that you need to do so?

If they really pick 50 "best" keywords out of all the keywords in an adgroup as opposed to "the first 50" keywords, then by splitting all your keywords into 50/adgroup will actually spread your good keywords among different adgroups. Perhaps a better way to do it is to dump 500 keywords into an adgroup, see which keywords that get the clicks, and delete the rest?

 

[ImagesAndWords]

Now this is interesting. For those of you who keep saying you need to have 50 keywords per adgroup, have you actually tested this or you just did it because you heard someone from somewhere (ppc-coach/digitalpoint/amitmehta/gauher/whatever) that you need to do so?

This is the word from Google, and not based losely on someone's claims.

If they really pick 50 "best" keywords out of all the keywords in an adgroup as opposed to "the first 50" keywords, then by splitting all your keywords into 50/adgroup will actually spread your good keywords among different adgroups. Perhaps a better way to do it is to dump 500 keywords into an adgroup, see which keywords that get the clicks, and delete the rest?

You can't see which keywords are getting clicks on a content network campaign. All you can see is what ads are getting the clicks, and what sites those clicks are coming from, so putting 500 words in one CN adgroup is a waste.

Forget about what makes sense for search campaigns. Content works totally different.

 

[prince]

This is the word from Google, and not based losely on someone's claims.

From what I know, Google didn't make it clear whether they will pick the "first 50 keywords" or "best 50 keywords". There's a difference there.

You can't see which keywords are getting clicks on a content network campaign. All you can see is what ads are getting the clicks, and what sites those clicks are coming from, so putting 500 words in one CN adgroup is a waste.

Actually you can by using tracking tools such as prosper, xtremeconversions. Otherwise, how do you think the keyword destination url & DKI trick would work?

Forget about what makes sense for search campaigns. Content works totally different.

I get what you mean, I've spent quite a bit on the content network too but even after using it for so long, content network is still very unpredictable unlike search campaigns.

 

[ImagesAndWords]

You can't see which keywords are getting clicks on a content network campaign. All you can see is what ads are getting the clicks, and what sites those clicks are coming from, so putting 500 words in one CN adgroup is a waste.

Actually you can by using tracking tools such as prosper, xtremeconversions. Otherwise, how do you think the keyword destination url & DKI trick would work?

I take that back. Yes, it is correct that you can monitor each keyword but this still doesn't justify having 500 keywords in a CN adgroup.

It's better to track things on an adgroup and URL level for content.

 

[bcc423]

In other words - focus more on WHO should be seeing ads from this adgroup (by telling Google what sorts of pages you wanna be featured on, according to your keywords) - and not so much on just slight variations all containing the same root keyword.

Yes, that's true. But you are missing the point of my question.
At the end, the problem is still the same.
Once you are down to picking keywords for a specific theme, it all comes down to the choice I outlined.

You are talking about picking out themes, and I'm talking about organizing keywords in one given ad group once you are done picking out the themes.

Those are two separate issues.

 

[bcc423]

From what I know, Google didn't make it clear whether they will pick the "first 50 keywords" or "best 50 keywords". There's a difference there.

It took me a bunch of phone calls and email messages to the same rep until he finally gave up, escalated the question to the engineers, and got back to me with the response that I posted above.

So yes, google picks "best" or "top" not "first" 50 keywords for the content theme match.