The Keyword planner feature is available for any clients that have an up and running AdWords account/ campaign. This tool is extremely useful to find new relevant keyword ideas what may help your ads and business (or whatever it is that you are advertising for) be found more often.

While I have mentioned the importance of keyword selection before, let me show you an example here on how the Keyword planner can help you. This is what you will see when you click on ‘Keyword Planner’ under ‘Tools’ at the top bar. The features that I personally use the most are the first two under ‘Find New Keywords & Get Search Volume’.

If you have been reading my previous posts, you would see that I like using Plumbing Pipers. Co as my go-to example. Let’s say that I have several possible keywords that popped into my mind without any research:

… And I have run out of ideas for plumbing keywords. If I use only these 3 keywords, I will definitely be missing out on so many impressions when people are searching for plumbing services!

This is when I will use the first feature: ‘Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category’. This feature not only will give me new keyword ideas, but gives me the volume trends of the keywords that I had in mind. Volume trend refers to the average number of searches of said keywords within a certain duration – in Google AdWords, the default date range will show the volume trends for the past 12 months in the regions you selected.

I key in the 3 keywords I have in mind, and used Malaysia as my location targeting setting. Although I will be targeting Subang Jaya – one small city – in my ads, I use the country as my targeting option for this so that I can get more ideas for what the Malaysians search for when in need of my services.

Think of it this way, if you want to carry out a survey about what food people like generally, you will get answers of wider variations if you ask a bigger group as compared to asking just your family members. You can try other settings too, such as the keyword filters where you can choose to look for new keyword ideas with average monthly searches more than, say, 200; or new keywords with a suggested bid of equal or less than RM3 as an example.

There’s a lot to experiment and explore on the keyword planner, really. Feel free to ask me about other features on the keyword planner if you’d like.

So, when you click on the ‘Get ideas’ button, you might see something like this:

From the first table on the page, I could see that the ‘plumbers near me’ and ‘plumbing services’ perform quite well at 720 & 1000 average searches a month. However, their suggested bid prices are a little on the expensive side. If my daily budget is only RM25, it wouldn’t make sense for me to bid RM6.50 for a click since that would mean that I can only get about 3 to 4 clicks a day at max. The 3^rd keyword, broken pipe repair, didn’t do too well at only 10 searches a month on average.

Wow, I’m going to need more keyword ideas at this rate! Something with a lower suggested bid, perhaps, and about 500 searches a month hopefully?

Before I proceed I would like you to know that the suggested bid is mostly for your reference only. You can start off with lower bids and if you see that your ads are at position lower than 2.5 and there’s a remark next to your keyword saying something like ‘Below First Page Bid; estimate: RM5.00’ or whatever. There are times when your ad’s average position is quite healthy at 2.5 or sometimes just 1.0, and it would still show this ‘below first page bid’ message. At times like this, you may ignore the comment. If your ad does perform quite poorly, perhaps at position 4 or even 7 sometimes, you can either change the keyword’s match type or straight out change the keyword if you cannot increase the max CPC bid.

So, back to looking for better keyword alternatives.

I applied the keyword filter to look for keyword ideas with more than 20 monthly searches and a suggested bid of less than RM3, just to be on the safe side. From the table, ‘toilet plumbing’, ‘clogged drain’, ‘plumbing pipe’ and ‘water heater installation’ could be promising since I provide these services and products!

Now, how to we implement the keywords into our account? You can use the slow and manual way of entering the keywords one by one, or you can add the keywords to your plans immediately!

Let’s assume that you do not have any ad groups in your account yet. At the right side of the keyword planner, you might see this:

You can add your ad groups in the ‘or start with an empty ad group’ button, and then add each wanted keywords into the ad group you select.

As an example, I want to put ‘toilet plumbing’ into the ‘toilet drains’ ad group. I click once on the newly added ad group, and click on the arrows under the ‘add to plan’ column in the new keyword ideas table. Keep adding relevant keywords to the relevant ad groups, and you can click on ‘review plan’ and click on the ‘save to account’ button at the top right corner which appears afterwards.

If you don’t already have ad groups in your campaign, you can select ‘add to an existing campaign à add as new ad groups’. You can even add the keywords into an existing ad group as well! If you don’t have a campaign, simply choose ‘create a new campaign’ and put your max CPC bids and your daily budgets before you save and continue! You will see your keywords when you click on ‘campaign’ at the top bar, then ‘keywords’. Remember, you can play around with the match types of your keywords once you add them into your account using this method!

Voila, your keywords are ready to trigger your ads for you!

And remember, you can always come sign up for Google AdWords with us, a Google Premium Partner (AdWords certified!!) to help you create and manage your campaigns! Simply click HERE and submit a form for us to start helping you out :) 

Interested to know more? 

Here are some relevant links from other blog posts under the 'Google AdWords' tag!

• The Structures of Google AdWords
• How Keywords Work in Search Advertising
• Making Text Ads More Prominent
• Dynamic Keywords & Ad Extensions

We have gone through several concepts under Google AdWords by now:

Remember Plumbing Pipers. Co? It has a good max CPC bid and good ad ranking now. Before we go into what ad extensions are and how they help make your ads stand out from the rest, let’s introduce you the dynamic keyword function in text ads first.

Let’s reuse our previous examples – the ‘leakage & minor repairs’ ad group and keyword ‘clogged drain’. Let’s say that I only used broad modifiers on this keyword, so that the keyword appears as ‘+clogged +drain’ in my keyword list.

Remember, using broad modifiers means that the ad for that ad group will be triggered as long as the words in the search query are synonymous with my keyword.

If for example a user searches for ‘In need of jammed sewers fixing’ on Google, it might have triggered the keyword ‘+clogged +drain’ from my keyword list. My text ad for ‘leakage & minor repairs’ then appears. Using dynamic keywords, here’s how my ad might appear to the user:

In my text ad write up, The first headline would appear like this:

Looking For {KeyWord:Clogged Drain} Fix?

The {KeyWord:} is the dynamic text insert. The most relevant keyword that’s similar to the user’s search will show up inside the {KeyWord: ____ } text, helping to enhance the ad relevancy experience. You can also apply dynamic keyword insertion in the description line, so that the keyword appears twice – once in the headline and once in the description line as shown below:

Now, that’s how a regular ad can appear without any ad extensions. It’s short and sweet, sure, but it is definitely not as attention grabbing as this example below:

Using ad extensions, we can add in extra information that we can’t add due to the text ads character limits and editorial guidelines. We are not allowed to put our contact numbers in the text ads, but we can add a call extension, a message extension, location, sitelink, callouts, structured snippets and so on! In my first blog post about Google AdWords I have mentioned that ad extensions can be added at ad group, campaign or account level.

If your AdWords account is based only on one shop in a single location, you can choose to add your location extension at account level so that every campaign & ad groups automatically adopt the location extension. As an example, Plumbing Pipers. Co has only one shop based in Bandar Sunway, so their address is added as a location extension on the account level.

Next, they might have two different campaigns. One targeting only Bandar Sunway for their repairing services while the other targets Malaysia as a whole for plumbing tools supplying. Those interested to get plumbing supplies will get directed to the phone number 012-345678, while the other group will be directed to 013-456789. In this scenario, call extensions can be added at their respective campaign levels.

Alternatively, this same action could be performed at ad group levels. One ad group could be linked to their repairing services website with 4 callouts – Fast Services, Quick Fix, Reliable & Trustworthy, & Long-Lasting Solutions. The ad group for plumbing tools supply might have another 4 – High Performance, 30% Off Old Tools, Free Delivery & Lowest Pricings. When these callouts are added at their respective ad group levels, these phrases only appear for ads under their own ad group and never the other.

To get an idea of what these extensions are, below are examples of text ads with extensions on it. These are the ones that I personally use more often, but other options are also available.

Callout extensions are where you can add special features such as free delivery, no minimum order, 20% off and so on.

In structured snippets, which can be even more advantageous when put at ad group levels, can work as a quick read-through menu of the products & services you provide. As an example, Plumbing Pipers. Co might have these structured snippets – Type: Leak Repair, Piping Overhaul, Sewer Installation, etc.

In message extensions, you can set a message template which brings users to their texting interface when they click the extension on their phone. Some extensions are only available on mobile, such as the message extension and call extensions.

Which extension appears alongside your ad depends on whether or not the combination of extensions you have can improve your campaign performances, and if your ad rank is high enough for the extensions to show. From the last blog post, you might have gotten a rough idea of how your ad rank is influenced. With a good quality score & max CPC bid, your extensions have a better chance of showing under your text ads and help make your ad more informative & prominent for users!

All these information & procedures might sound tedious to go through, and so here comes the shameless self-promotion. I do work in this sector afterall, and so if you want to know more about how Google AdWords can help you or perhaps if you are thinking of signing up for AdWords services, our company provides this service where we plan, run and optimize your campaigns for you so that your potential clients can find your business whenever they are looking for you! You can sign up at this link so that we can provide you with more information or help guide you through the process. 

In the last blog post, we talked about how keywords work. We have also previously went through the structures involved in Google AdWords. 

• Quality Score
• Maximum Cost Per Click Bid (Max CPC)
• Ad Extensions

• Landing page experience
• Does the website the users go to after clicking on your ad load quickly? Does your webpage offer enough information for the product they are searching for? If your user is browsing on mobile, is your webpage mobile-friendly? This criterion is all about user friendliness of your website. Easy navigation, trustworthiness of the seller et cetera, all factors into the landing page experience.

• Expected Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
• How likely are people going to click on the ad when it shows up from their Google search? If I searched for ‘broken water pipes’ and the ad comes up for ‘kitchen sink repair’, it’s less likely that I will click on the ad.
• This factor is one of the reasons why it’s good to divide your products/ services into different ad groups so that the ads for each ad group only shows up for the most relevant keywords.
• Example: I have 3 ad groups, one for selling orange juice, one for carbonated drinks and one for coffee. Each ad group has their own ads for the relevant products. The expected CTR for these ads will be higher than if I had just combined all 3 products into one ad group called ‘beverages’ and the ad becomes a bit less specific.

• Ad Relevance
• When I click on the ad, where does the ad bring me? Is it to your company website’s homepage? The ‘Our Services’ page with your contact number? Or a website about blueberry jam? The more relevant the website people land on after clicking on your ad, the higher the score for this.

Taken together, these three components decide the quality score of your keyword & text ad. Then, there’s the Max CPC bidding. How much are you willing to pay for a click on your ad?