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In the last few years, Google algorithm updates have resulted in significant changes. The BERT update, for example, saw the birth of user intent. This is where Google shows results based on why the user is searching and that is why you should have a good keyword generator.
The updates affected PPC marketing too. You need to be cognizant of user intent when setting up PPC campaigns.
In this article, we explore the implications of close variants in PPC. We will define keywords, which tool should be used as keyword variations generator and why to keep your eyes open for close variants.
Let’s dive in.
There are several ways to define keywords.
We can define keywords as the major topics that your content is about. For example, ‘children’s toys’ is an appropriate keyword for a site that sells toys for children.
For PPC, keywords are the words or phrases we use when targeting our ads. ‘Children’s toys’ is an appropriate keyword for targeting parents who want to buy toys for their children.
Sometimes, we use keywords interchangeably with search queries or search terms. Search terms are what users put into search engines.
A user may key in ‘children’s toys’ in Google’s search box, for example. We could refer to the search term as a keyword. Reason one: it is what our toy site is about. Reason two: we could use the phrase in a PPC campaign.
Now that we have looked at ‘what is a keyword’, let’s explore its importance.
When users key in search terms, they do so for a reason. A user who keys in ‘children’s toys’ may want to buy a toy for their child. The user may be a parent who wants to know more about children’s toys. It could even be a researcher who is writing a paper on toys.
As you can see, users have different reasons why they search. This is what we referred to earlier as ‘user intent’.
As a marketer, you already know who your ideal customer is. If you are selling toys, for example, parents are your ideal customers.
You, however, need to further define the parent. If you are selling toys for toddlers, your target parents are those with toddlers.
You want to have parents with toddlers coming to your site. After keying in search terms, these are the parents who should visit your site.
The keywords you choose should make it possible for you to get organic traffic.
Keywords and relevance go hand in hand. Relevant keywords help you rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
In the parents with toddlers example, an appropriate keyword could be ‘toddler toys’. Using this keyword on your site could have you ranking higher in SERPs.
We have looked at the importance of keywords. Why are they important in PPC?
They Determine Where Your Ad Appears and How Much It Costs.
The keywords you choose determine ad rank. This is a value that determines ad position. Ad position is where your ads will show when compared to your competitors’ ads. Ad rank also determines whether your ads get to show at all.
There are many factors that contribute to ad rank. These include:
Your keywords need to be relevant in order to have a high ad rank score.
A good keyword variations generator always have option to filter keywords based on different parameters.
Keywords intent may be transactional, informational or navigational but based on the size of the keywords it is divided into two types:
These are phrases with only one or two words. Our ‘children’s toys’ and ‘toddler toys’ example are short tail keywords.
They have high search volumes as they are more ‘general’. They are also more competitive. You are more likely to have a higher CPC (cost-per-click) with these. It is also more difficult to rank high in SERPS with short tails.
‘Children’s toys’ has a search volume of 5,400 and a $1.43 CPC.
It is difficult to establish intent with short tails. A keyword like ‘toddler toys’ could serve multiple intents. It is difficult to have one page on your site that serves multiple intents. The same is true for PPC.
Terms that are related to the short tails will bring up results. Google can show your ads too. People looking for children’s gifts can see your site with the ‘toddler toys’ keyword.
Google may not be entirely wrong. Toddler toys can be gifts too. However, gifts may not be a focus of your business.
Short tails are more likely to result in irrelevant traffic to your site. In PPC campaigns, you are most likely to end up wasting advertising dollars.
These are on the other end of the spectrum. They are phrases with 3 to 10 words. They could even be longer. There are many keyword generator tools available in market which help you to shortlist your keywords immediately based on long-tail.
For example our ‘toddler toys’ short tail can be like in long tail with more words. We used a keyword tool and got several versions to have long tail keywords examples:
Long-tail keywords have lower search volume. They however are more targeted and can match user intent. They also have less competition.
This means that you are more likely to rank higher in SERPs. You can also get relevant organic traffic to your site from SERPs. Your ideal target audience is also more likely to see your ads.
Let’s look at the long tail ‘toddler toys for boys’. You could use it to:
An even longer tail is ‘toddler toys to keep them busy’. This keyword has an even more focused search intent. The parents with the toddlers could be frustrated. They are looking for a way to keep their children busy.
They could be working from home. They want to have fewer distractions from their toddlers. They might want their children to spend less time on screens.
You can use the above long tail:
Following are other types of keywords which you can consider in digital marketing:
Negative keywords are worth mentioning as they play a vital role in PPC.
They help you exclude keywords you deem irrelevant to your PPC campaigns. For example, let’s say that your toys site only sells handcrafted toys.
You may want to exclude all brand names from your site. This is because your toys are least likely to be found in major stores.
Negative keywords help to make your ads more focused.
This may not be a keyword type per se. It is however important to do some competitor keyword research. The strategy here is to look for missed opportunities. You can look for the keywords your competition is not ranking for. Target them in your ads and content. If they have high search volume and are long tail, then they are ideal.
These keywords help you reach even more relevant audiences you can filter out your keywords based on:
Geo specific targeting could also help you take care of specific dialects.
It may help to use keywords that are seasonal. These need to be relevant, though. People selling roses are most likely to benefit from including ‘Valentines’ in their keywords. This only works if it is around Valentines. Having “Christmas Discount” and “New Year Sale” will be the best examples of seasonal keywords.
The quick answer is that you should use all. This however depends on your goal and budget. You may want to outdo your competition for a particular keyword, for example. Here, you could go for a short tail like ‘children’s toys’.
You want to keep a hawk’s eye on your CPC. So, you are better placed to go with long tails. Depending on your business, you can add the other types too.
How close should a search term be to your keyword? Google has keyword matching options that allow you to define this. There are several choices here. Let’s investigate them below.
This is usually the default if you do not specify the keyword matching type.
Broad match is when your ad shows if the user’s search term:
For example, our keyword ‘children’s toys’ may show for keyword “toys for kids”
With broad match, your ads may be seen by more users. They are ideal for ‘brand awareness’ types of ads.
With ‘lead generation’ ads, you want to keep a close eye on your CPC. This is because they are more expensive. You could waste a significant part of your budget.
Phrase match is the sweet spot of PPC.
Phrase match is more targeted than broad match. It is however not as restrictive as exact match. We will look at exact match more in the next section.
If our phrase match keyword is ‘kid’s toys’, it will show for keywords like:
Google shows your ads to users who key in your exact keyword and its variants. This is very similar to the exact match. With phrase match, there can be additional words before and after the exact keyword.
However, phrase match maintains the integrity of the principal keyword’s word order. Let’s say that our phrase match keyword is ‘kid’s toys’. Your ad will not show if an unrelated word is used. Especially if it is in the middle of the phrase.
This is because it will alter the meaning of the phrase.
Exact match is when your ad shows if the user’s search term:
An exact match keyword in Google Ads will only participate in an auction in which the search query perfectly matches or is a close variant of your keyword.
For example for keyword “Lawn mowing service” will trigger if the user will type the same as search term but this same keyword may also trigger for “Grass cutting service” as the meaning of the both search terms matching with the intent.
Before BERT, users saw your ads if search terms precisely matched your exact keywords.
In July 2019, Google made the ‘close variants’ announcement. Users who typed exact match close variants could see your ads!
Worse still, this had been going on for months before Google made the official announcement!
People search for things differently, even when intent is similar. Google reports that 15% of all searches are new every day. This means that new keywords are being generated daily. Google Keyword Planner does not even have these keywords in its database.
Close variants come in handy to help you capture novel ways that people search. Without close variants, marketers would need to create encyclopedic keyword lists for PPC campaigns.
Close variants help us capture missed keywords. They can be a minefield. Let’s further explore this.
In both keyword matching and variants, semantics are vital. If, however, a query matches your keyword, Google will prioritize it.
Let’s look at a query like ‘where can I buy kid’s toys near me’. Google will first check if it matches your keyword ‘buy kid’s toys’. If it does, it continues to match with it. Google then prevents variants like ‘get toys near me’ from triggering your ad.
The extent of the restriction is not quite clear, though. Will Google restrict all ‘get kid’s toys’ queries? When will the restrictions apply? What about subsequent searches from the same user?
As you can already see, variants are difficult to control.
40% of exact match queries are close variants. This may seem positive at face value. However, marketers have reported seeing a 10 to 15% decrease in conversion rates. Revenues have also decreased by 10%, ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).
Why is this the case? Most of the close variants are simply irrelevant. This means that your ad is seen by irrelevant audiences.
Close variants make it possible for keyword overlap between advertisers. Your ads and your competitors’ may be shown for the same variant.
This may inadvertently cause CPC costs to go through the roof.
Keyword variations generator helps you to have multiple variety of keywords related to your intent if you have long-tail then you will find long-tail variations. Close variants are here to stay. We need to find a way to work with them. Let’s explore a few strategies below:
Google recommend for at least 3 ads in an ad group. You can choose to include a close variant in several ads. You can have your main keyword in the first ad in the ad group.
Let’s say that your principal keyword is ‘handcrafted toys’.
Handcrafted Toys – Kids’ Custom Made Toys
Handcrafted Toys – Unique Handmade Toys
Handcrafted Toys – Handmade Kid Toys
It is advisable to use phrase match or exact match when working with close variants.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of negative keywords in the era of variants. In the above example, build a list of all ‘store bought toys’ keywords. This list needs to be as exhaustive as possible.
To add negative keywords to your PPC campaign:
Yes, you read that right. You can add negative keywords at different levels of your campaign.
The most irrelevant keywords need to go to the campaign level. While the least relevant to the ad group level.
So, how do you determine how immaterial the keywords are? Keyword research. You can use the PPCexpo Keyword Planner tool.
Use your chief keyword, and what you deem as your main negative keyword. Once you have your list, you can use the following criteria:
If you want research tool for long tail keywords you should not go anywhere else. To uncover long-tail keywords and the close variants PPCexpo Keyword Planner is a best keyword variations generator and this show how you can take advantage of this:
Before you can delve deeper into the close variants of your ideal key terms start with your root keyword. Let’s suppose you are an online retailer and want to boost your sales for the men jeans you are selling. You can start with your initial keyword and that is “blue jeans for men”
When you have searched for your initial keyword this tool will give you a list of similar keywords from this similar keyword list you can define your close variants keywords.
This list will give you an idea about the keywords that is close variants of your root keywords these keywords will be added as negatives in your ad groups.
Filter section on the keyword planner allow you to filter the results based on search volume, Avg. CPC and Similarity. Even you can filter the results based on short-tail and long-tail keyword that is the real beauty of long-tail keyword generator.
Now you have a list of keywords which you found as close variants you can download it as a CSV file to
make it super-easy to upload directly into your Google Ads account and put your keywords to work.
Although Google is adding more machine learning into the mix to determine keyword variants with the same meaning, it’s also making sure the advertiser is still in command of the campaign as a whole with this tool.
In digital marketing, keywords with minimum three to four words will come under the category of long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords have good CTR but generally they have less search volume so based on different industries, they usually cost cheaper.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner is a best tool to research short-tail and long-tail keywords.
In this article we have explored the question: what is a keyword? We have defined keywords and their importance. We have then narrowed to PPC and looked at:
We then saw how consequential Google updates can be. The BERT update significantly contributed to the introduction of close variants.
We conclude by exploring close variants:
We have properly equipped you regarding keywords. It’s time to refine your PPC campaigns by exploring new keywords with the help of PPCexpo Keyword Planner.
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