Five Steps to Clean Up Your PPC Keywords

Five Steps to Clean Up Your PPC Keywords

Step One: Clean up Your Account Structure.
Start cleaning up your account structure by examining your ad groups and campaigns. Analyze their performances and pause any that are under-performing or not bringing in value. This step will probably be your most arduous task, especially if you manage one or more large accounts.

Then, move on to restructuring your account and tightening your groups. (Groups of 10-15 keywords are optimal.) Organize your keyword groups into themes and keep them targeted, taking care to ensure each ad group has relevant and similarly themed keywords so that the ad shown matches the keywords used in a search. Users are less likely to convert if there’s a discrepancy between your ads and what they’re searching for. Additionally, consider placing your best and top-performing keywords into a group of their own, creating targeted copy for each of them.

Step Two: Clean up Your Keyword Lists
To guarantee your PPC efforts are running smoothly, look at the different types of keywords and keyword lists you’ve created. Begin by removing keywords that are obsolete or just don’t perform well. Then, remove those that have received low impressions over time or no impressions at all, since these keywords have an impact on the overall Quality Score (QS) of the ad group and campaign in the long run. Try cleaning up inactive keywords that have no traffic or few impressions every 60 days. (You can reduce or extend the timeframe based on your personal judgment.)

Step Three: Clean up Your Seasonal Keywords
Cleaning up your seasonal keywords is especially critical for B2C accounts, but it should also be done in a B2B environment. When cleaning up keywords—especially if you rely on seasonal ones—make sure you’ve paused any that aren’t applicable to the current season. (For example, by March your Christmas sale keywords should’ve been paused long ago.)

Step Four: Clean up Your Negative Keywords
To clean up your negative keywords, perform an in-depth search term analysis in 14-, 30-, 60-, and 90-day windows to determine the keywords you need to target. Once you’ve nailed down the keywords that attract visits from people who aren’t in your target audience, negative match these not only at the ad group level, but also at the campaign and account levels.

Step Five: Clean up Duplicate and Low QS Keywords
Duplicate keywords are a burden on your budget. Apart from having a negative impact on your Quality Score, they can cannibalize your budget if left unattended. This occurs when similar words end up in the same auctions, causing you to compete against yourself, along with driving up your cost-per-clicks (CPCs). Thus, as you perform your PPC spring cleanup, check for duplicate keywords and remove any you find.

To read the complete guide to ‘cleaning up your PPC keywords’ visit the Search Engine Journal article.

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