SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups) or Not to SKAG?

When you have an Ad group that has hundreds of different keywords, trying to manage all the match types, bidding strategies, and targeting can be an overwhelming task. Thankfully, there’s a way to combat this situation – it’s known as the SKAG approach, which stands for Single Keyword Per Ad Group.

This makes it easier to control your Ad groups and your budget. However, the SKAG approach is not without its problems.

In this article, we’ll explore the SKAG approach in great detail, giving you all you need to know about it so you can use it in the right way to improve your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising efforts.

What is a Single Keyword Ad Group (SKAG)?

A Single Keyword Ad Group is an Account structuring strategy that creates a focused relationship between a single keyword, your ad, and the corresponding landing page. The idea is to avoid any complicated or confusing Ad groups.

There is much debate about how to tap into the full potential of the SKAG strategy, as some marketers believe all match types of a single keyword should be together in one Ad group, while others argue that each match type deserves a separate Ad group.

Let’s look at the different methods of splitting Ad groups within a PPC campaign.

1. Single Keyword or Single Theme

This is one of the most popular methods, and it is a hotly discussed topic in the SKAG realm. There are two views on how SKAG in a single theme should be set up:

• One keyword with one match type per Ad group.
• One idea or theme with multiple keywords per Ad group.

For instance, let’s say you’re selling handbags.

The theme here is “handbags.” You could use keywords like “white handbags and “brown leather handbags” with different match types.

This way, you can set up different Ad groups for each specific product category.

But what if you only have one product?

In this case, you can create a Single Product Ad Group. This would include all the keywords for that product, and you can create a single ad and landing page based on these keywords.

2. Keyword Match Types Per Ad Group

Many marketers are still confused by Keywords Match types, even when they have been doing PPC advertising for a while. Some people think a mix of modified broad match, phrase match, and exact match types is the best idea for effective targeting. Once you have a better understanding of how people are searching for your products, you can hone in on them with phrase and exact match types for your long-tail keywords.

The main problem with this strategy is that you will invariably attract a lot of unqualified traffic, which means you need to stay vigilant in identifying these irrelevant keywords so you can update your negative keywords list.

By focusing on long-tail keywords, you can get more specific and filter out the many keywords that are attracting these irrelevant users.

Another thing people tend to do is to split SKAGs according to match type. This effectively turns one single ad group into three, which dilutes data collection. This makes it harder to do ad testing effectively.

Remember to strive for a balance between reach and relevance when you’re selecting your match types. Exact match keywords might be very relevant for your target audience, but they will have a limited reach. Conversely, modified broad match keywords will have a wide reach, but they will compromise relevance.

3. Landing Page per Ad Group

If you are using SKAG, you may be advised to use a different landing page for each separate Ad group. In truth, it’s okay to use a single landing page across multiple Ad groups – sometimes. It all depends on your campaign goals.

For example, if you have several similar products, targeting keywords like “brown handbag” and “black leather handbag”, then a single landing page for the “Handbags” theme will suffice.

However, if you have a generalist store with a broader selection of products, this approach wouldn’t work for targeting keywords that are only vaguely related, like “men’s football shirts” and “women’s running shoes”. In this case, a separate landing page for each Ad group would be best.

4. Ad per Ad Group

It’s best to associate a single Ad for each keyword per Ad group but ensure to create more than two ads in an Ad group for A/B testing. This strategy will lead to a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) and a higher probability of conversion.

Why Use SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups)?

There are plenty of benefits to using SKAG in PPC advertising. It all boils down to having more control over your campaigns, which makes it possible to improve your ad performance and overall return on investment (ROI) in Google Ads.

With this control, it isn’t just the advertiser who benefits, as the enhancements spread throughout the campaign, leading to better ads, and better user experience.

This is especially attractive for advertisers with an eye on their budget. Nobody wants to throw money away, and the level of control that a SKAG offers you will ensure you don’t do that so easily.

Let’s consider the distinct advantages of a SKAG approach in more detail.

1. It’s Easier to Maintain the Ad Group Level

As you may expect, a Single Ad Keyword Group is a lot easier to manage than an Ad group that has multiple keywords. You only need to keep an eye on one keyword, so it takes less time and effort, which makes it more efficient.

2. Improved Bid and Budget Management (BBM)

With a SKAG, you can exercise greater control over keyword bids. This allows you to keep a tight grip on your PPC budget, ensuring that nothing spirals out of control quickly – which can happen in more extensive campaigns.

3. It’s Easy to Gauge Individual Performance

It’s vital to monitor performance in PPC advertising. With SKAGs, this task becomes very smooth, as you can quickly glean insights on how your keywords are performing. With only one keyword in each Ad group, it’s easy to assess critical metrics and make the necessary adjustments to improve conversion rates.

4. Your CTR Will Grow

By focusing on fewer keywords, your ads become more laser-focused on a specific group of users. People will soon realize that your ads are more relevant to their needs, and so your ads will elicit more clicks.

5. Quality Score Will Improve

Following on from that rising CTR, Google Ads will soon pick up on the increasing relevance of your PPC ads. As a result, your ad’s Quality Score will improve.

When you adopt the SKAG strategy and use it to improve Quality Score, soon enough you’ll notice a host of improvements across many key metrics, such as your cost-per-click, impression share, and average position in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

6. Better Ad Positions

The domino effect continues here as improvements in CTR and Quality Score will encourage Google to award your ads a higher average position in SERPs, as the platform realizes your ads and landing pages are delivering a better user experience that is more relevant and engaging for users.

Furthermore, when you begin outranking competitors, you can start winning keywords for lower bids, which is great news for your budget.

7. Higher Impression Shares

Impression share is directly related to your ad’s Quality Score and its components. So, as these factors improve, so too, will your impression share.

8. Enhance the User Experience of Your Landing Pages

Using the SKAG approach gives you a clear understanding of the users you want to attract with your ad. This also makes it easier to optimize your landing page, as you can create very targeted content around the single keyword, and personalize the landing page experience for this segment of your audience.

This is perfect for driving conversions on a single campaign goal, as everything will be streamlined, starting from user search queries all the way to conversion.

What that means is that your ad begins to get triggered more often for specific keywords, which helps you engage more users, attract more clicks, and eventually, earn more conversions.

9. Less Wasted Ad Spend

If you’re on a tight budget, using a SKAG will be a big help as you can cut down wasted spend in a big way. By staying on top of your negative keywords list, you can refine ad click traffic, and avoid spending much at all on irrelevant clicks. Also, you should look to leverage any data insights you have about keyword performance from previous campaigns. This will make it easier to identify good keywords to use in a Single Keyword Ad Group.

10. Performance Scaling

With all the aforementioned benefits in mind, it’s easier to understand that a SKAG approach will make it relatively simple to scale performance.

All the analytics data and stats in each Ad group refer to a single keyword, so it’s easy to make informed decisions in each Ad group, which paves the way for a steady increase in performance over time.

6 Big Problems When Using the SKAG Strategy

Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and roses when using a Single Keyword Ad Group. Here are six things to be aware of when you take this road:

1. Setting up a SKAG is Time-Consuming

Perhaps you think fewer keywords means less time. In the long run, it will, but up front, it’s a tedious process to start. Just think about all the keyword you already have in your Google Ads account.

There may be hundreds, maybe even thousands. Imagine how long it will take to set up a separate ad group for every keyword.

A little bit crazy, right?

2. Conflicting Match Types

You may create a SKAG that generates zero impressions. That’s pretty bad for your advertising campaign and your bottom line.

Let’s consider the term “sell cars online”, and imagine you have set up this keyword in your SKAG with three different match types:

• Exact Match
• Phrase Match
• Modified Broad Match

In this instance, your single ad is targeting three match types, and therefore, the ad won’t be triggered as all the match types will conflict. In the end, the bidding price would increase, and you would lose impression share without even competing.

3. It Can Cause a Mess in Your Ads Account

It’s an easy mistake to think that a SKAG approach is perfect for organizing your Ads account. While successful PPC advertisers may be able to maintain a clutter-free account, SKAGs are not a quick fix in this regard. The more SKAGs you create, the more sprawling and confusing your Ads account will become.

Even if you focus on one product group like electrical gadgets, you may end up with lots of separate ad groups for a range of keywords, like “best tablet”, “best smartphone”, and “best smartphone camera” . This may not make sense as all the ads would be quite similar, and essentially, they would all be targeting the same users.

4. SKAGs Increase the Probability of Duplicate Keywords

Google Ads will not automatically prevent you from creating multiple ad groups with the same keyword. Therefore, you may end up with a lot of duplicate keywords, which is detrimental to your advertising efforts. In effect, your ads will compete against each other, and you may unwittingly drive bidding prices up as you bid against yourself. This simple mistake can increase wasted spend.

5. Experience is Essential

A SKAG strategy is in the hands of the advertiser. If you’re well-versed in Google Ads, you may be able to get the best out of this approach. However, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can quickly become a disaster.

Unless you’ve already gained some experience with PPC advertising, and have run campaigns with multiple keywords, you should probably stay clear of Single Keyword Ad Groups.

By diving in without experience or data insights to guide your decisions, you will probably struggle, and amid your frustration and confusion, you may quickly drain your budget.

6. It Requires More Effort than Usual

Success in paid advertising is massively dependent on the effort you put into it. However, a SKAG approach requires more of an investment than you may be prepared to dedicate.

You’ll need to keep tabs on search terms and continuously look to identify irrelevant keywords and update your negative keywords list at the Ad group level. Otherwise, you will attract too many irrelevant clicks, and lose out on eligible impressions.

6 Optimization Tips for a Single Keyword Ad Group

While a SKAG approach can be confusing and time-consuming, you can ensure that it is not time wasted when you apply some smart optimization tactics. Follow these best practices to keep your SKAG on the right track for high returns:

1. Consistency

In PPC advertising, you won’t get far if you’re only dropping in to check on things sporadically. You’ll quickly lose track of things, and will only get more confused as more data flows in. By taking a consistent approach to campaign analysis, you’ll get into a good habit, and will become acquainted with the key metrics, factors affecting performance, and the trends in the data. Check out the reporting tools from PPCexpo to improve your campaign analysis today.

2. Periodic Testing

While it takes more time, regular testing is a crucial element of SKAG success. Test out different Ad groups to discover user search queries that are a better match for your ad copy. This will help you refine your ad copy text and improve engagement metrics over time.

3. Avoid Duplicates

As mentioned already, duplicate keywords can be a big issue when using a SKAG approach in paid advertising. When a user enters a search query, and it triggers a keyword in several of your Ad groups, you’ll gain nothing. Remove duplicates when you find them to optimize your campaign.

4. Remember that Relevance is Key

You could have excellent copywriting skills and fantastic keywords that get a lot of monthly traffic. You may also have an attractive landing page with professional photographs and slick design work. But if your keywords are irrelevant for what you’re offering, then all of it will be for nothing.

Never compromise on relevance! Your keywords must be relevant for your products or services and also for the users. Analyze whatever data you have on previous keyword performance to identify lead-generating terms for your SKAGs.

5. Match Types Matter

A scattergun-approach to match types may cost you impressions or money – or both. Think carefully about your campaign goals, whether it’s brand awareness or conversions, and then consider how best to use match types to achieve those goals.

Instead of opting for broad match types, you can sidestep potential conflicts by breaking down your long-tail keywords and creating multiple SKAGs in your PPC campaign.

6. Don’t Be Afraid of Making Big Changes

When you’re working with just one single keyword in an Ad group, it gives you more freedom to experiment with the other elements in play.

You can get creative by making significant changes to your ad copy to try out wildly different voices, headlines, CTAs. Each Ad group can be very different from the next, and you can run extensive testing techniques to find the most effective versions of your ads.

To ensure more success with this, you should have a detailed analysis of your previous campaign performance data before starting.

Should You Use a SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Groups) Approach?

In PPC advertising, there are endless ways of creating effective campaigns. The concept of a Single Keyword Ad Group is widely debated by experienced advertisers, with many people questioning just how smart or potent it is when it comes to making the best use of your time and budget.

While it has excellent benefits, a SKAG approach should probably not be the only strategy you are using. It may be a smarter use of your resources to use SKAGs alongside other PPC strategies, and also to have some Multiple Keyword Ad Groups in your account.

Over time, Google Ads has evolved to embrace artificial intelligence and automation in a big way. This comes with a host of benefits for advertisers, but it’s not a good idea to rely solely on automation just yet.

The SKAG approach gives you full control over your Ad groups. If you have the experience in Google Ads, and the time to dedicate to your campaign analysis and testing, then it can be a very powerful strategy.

Ultimately, the SKAG concept is a double-edged sword that can help you be victorious in your advertising efforts, or it can cause you immense pain. It all depends on how you use it.