Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Creating Ad Groups with Unrelated Keywords

The easiest way to set up an ad group is to write an ad, dump every keyword you can think of into that group, and send it to your home page. Heck, that should take you about ten minutes of work if you're using some of the powerful keyword tools we talk about in Chapter 5. It's much more complicated and time-consuming to create tight ad groups, based on a narrow set of related keywords matched closely to the ads and the landing page, but your results will be well worth the extra time and effort.

Keywords unrelated to ads and landing pages produce poor CTR and conversion results — and cost a lot of money because of the poor Quality Score penalty. Each keyword represents a mindset, so take the time to group your keywords by similar mindsets, and write your ads and landing pages to address the desires and fears attached to those mindsets.

You can tell when your ad groups are too broad if the CTRs of different keywords in the same group vary wildly. You may discover that the successful keywords are found in the ad headline and repeated in the description or URL. Peel the underperforming keywords out of that ad group and stick them into their own group, with an ad written just for them.