Launch a Google Ads Campaign

We’ve created and configured our first campaign. In this chapter, we’re going to learn how to select the best keywords and include them in an ad group.

Use Match Types

Google Ads has a number of different match types to give you full control over the keywords you want to trigger your ad.

By match, we mean “a match between the internet user’s search query and the keywords you've selected and linked to an ad group.”

Well yes, this is quite a complicated subject. Google’s official definition is shown below, but we’ll look at some real examples throughout this chapter that will help you understand.

The keyword match types dictate how closely the keyword needs to match with the user’s search query for the ad to be considered for the auction.

There are various types of matches between keywords and queries, from the broadest match to the most specific and restrictive. As we’ll see, we use symbols with the targeted keyword to differentiate these match types.

Broad Match Keywords

The first type of match is the widest and is called simply broad match.

If you want to let Google Ads know that you want your ad to be triggered in the widest circumstances, you enter your keyword as it is, without any symbols.

This will mean that your ad could be displayed when the user enters a synonym, a variant, or a search related to your keyword.

As you can see in the above example, if your broad match keyword is “low sugar diet,” your ad might display when a user enters “low calorie recipes” or “low sugar eating plan,” which is obviously different from your targeted keyword, but still directly linked.

"Phrase Match" Keywords

The second match type is the phrase match.

When using a phrase match, you need to enclose your keyword in quotes (tennis shoes, for example).

You can see an example below where we’ve used phrase matches for our targeted keywords: 

As you can see from this example, we’re being a bit more precise than we were for the broad match type. Queries that have the same meaning as our targeted keyword are acceptable (e.g., comfortable tennis sneakers), but queries that are not as closely related are excluded (e.g., tennis rackets). Unlike the broad match type, your product or service must be included (either directly or implicitly) in the user’s query for your ad to be displayed.

For both phrase match and broad match types, Google will allow the search to contain different wording before and after the keyword.

[Exact Match] Keywords

Our third match type works along the same lines but with more constraints. This is the exact match keyword.

The syntax for exact match types is to enclose the keyword in square brackets, for example, [red shoes].

Let’s look an example to make it easier to understand:

As you can see, we're being much more precise when we use the exact keyword match type.

By enclosing your keyword in square brackets, you’re telling Google Ads that you only want queries that match the words enclosed between the square brackets and nothing else. Any words before or after your keyword won’t be acceptable in this case.

Here’s a final example below to summarize everything we’ve covered above.

Let’s imagine that an advertiser wants to target the keyword lawn mowing service.

Here are some user queries in a search engine that would trigger ads to appear based on the different match types selected by the advertiser:

As a general rule, a broader match between the keyword and search terms will bring a higher volume of traffic.

On the other hand, a more precise and targeted match will bring a lower volume of traffic, but these will be qualified leads.

Place Keywords in a Negative Keyword List

As you’ve seen, you can use a number of methods when targeting keywords in Google Ads,

but you can also exclude certain keywords.

This is a way of letting Google Ads know about the keywords you’re not interested in.

Shall we look at an example?

Imagine that you’re an optician. You sell eyeglasses and you want to target certain keywords related to your products.

In this scenario, you can add negative keywords that will be excluded from search terms, such as wine glasses or water glasses. This will prevent your ads from being displayed for these kinds of queries, which might happen if you’re using a broad match on the keyword glasses.

You can’t exclude keywords when you’re first setting up your campaign, though. Once you’ve created your campaign and you’re back on the Google Ads dashboard, there’s a menu on the left-hand side of your screen. You need to take the following steps:

1. Click on Keywords within the page menu on the left.

2. Click on Negative keywords.

3. Click the Plus button to add your negative keywords.

Identify Targeted Keywords

Don’t panic! I’m going to show you how it all works.

The next step in the creation of our campaign is setting up an ad group.

As I told you, each ad group has an associated set of keywords. 

To help you find the right keywords, Google Ads has developed a tool called Keyword Planner.

I would highly recommend that you use this option for your first campaign.

This tool can be found in the top-right menu on your Google Ads account, within Tools and Settings.

You can use this tool to search for new keywords, find ideas and understand trends, and get data on search volumes, which can be really useful. You can also use it to help set your budget once you’ve completed your testing phase.

We’re going to search for keywords for the campaign we’re currently creating.

Our campaign is centered around menswear for skiing, snowboarding, and other mountain activities.

So, we’re going to ask Google Ads to give us some ideas.

There are three things to look at here:

1. The keywords that we provided to the tool at the top of the screen

2. Google’s suggested keywords, based on what we provided

3. Average monthly search volume for each keyword

What we need to do is select keywords that seem most relevant to our business and group them into categories so that we can create our ad groups.

Different keywords will be more or less relevant depending on your ad groups and the products or services you want to promote.

In our example, we can select keywords such as men’s ski jacket, men’s snow pants, and many more. We’re not going to select a keyword such as women’s cross-country ski pants at this point, because our campaign is for menswear.

So, it’s up to you to pick and choose what you want.

Create Your First Ad Group

Let’s go back to creating our campaign.

Now everything’s set up, we can move on to creating our first ad group.

As you can see above, you need to name your ad group and provide the keywords you want to target.

This is where we’re going to put everything we’ve seen in this chapter into practice. We’re going to target keywords using different match types that are best suited to our goals.

For our mountain sports online store, we’re currently creating a Men’s Clothes campaign. So, our first ad group will be for ski pants.

So, at the moment we have an ad group targeting 14 keywords. As you can see, all of these keywords relate to our Ski Pants category, and we’re going to use different match types within our ad group.

We’re going to create some other ad groups later, for helmets and coats.

For now, we just need to create ads linked to the Ski Pants ad group.

Meet me in the next chapter and we’ll go through it!

Let’s Recap!

• Within an ad group, you can target and also exclude keywords.

• In both cases, whether you’re targeting or excluding, you’ll use keyword match types. This will determine the level of matching you wish to achieve between the targeted keyword and the user search query. 

• There are three types of matches, from the broadest (broad match) to the most precise (exact match).

• Google has created a tool to give you ideas about which keywords to target or exclude. This tool is called Keyword Planner.

• When placing your keywords, you need to group keywords into categories using ad groups and use match types to suit your goals.

Meet me in the next chapter where you’ll be creating your very first ads!