When creating and configuring campaigns, determining how many keywords to show in an ad group may not be your priority. However, the number of keywords or product ads you choose to include in your ad group can affect its performance.
Keyword dumping
You may feel that adding all of the keywords assuming that the most successful will naturally rise to the top but it seems that is not the case. It’s called keyword dumping.
You can add up to 1000 keywords per ad group. If you add a lot of keywords indiscriminately with a keyword research tool, it is probably keyword dumping. Keyword dumping can lead you to a situation I call “whack a mole”.
Whack a mole?
If your ad group / campaign doesn’t have enough keyword budget and because of this you’re stuck in a constant cycle of keyword optimization, then it is probably keyword dumping.
For example, a seller has 1000 keywords in an ad group, but doesn’t have enough budget to get impressions of 1000 keywords, so in this case, Amazon assigns 100 impressions of the 1000 keywords. If you optimize the first set of 100 keywords, your campaign budget will then roll over to the next set of 100 keywords, and you need to optimize that set. If it took a full month to fully optimize 100 keywords, it would take 10 months to fully optimize this campaign.
Keyword dumping and product dumping occurs when you have an ad group with lots of keywords and products.
People fall into the keyword dumping trap by using tools designed for SEO or keyword research and copying all the results and pasting them into ad groups. This is not the purpose of these tools. You must filter the results to determine the results that are worth including in your campaign.
Testing your keywords is good, testing too many keywords at the same time doesn’t give you actionable results.
Why is keyword dumping a bad thing?
There are so many reasons when it comes to the bad part of keyword dumping. We’re going to look at some of them below.
Keyword dumping mixes your keyword strategies.
Different keyword types require different strategies, but if they’re in the same ad group, they’re all treated the same. There is a chance of grouping branded and unbranded keywords, different keywords with hit points, and weak and strong converters in one keyword dump. When you execute your keyword strategy, everything has to be in its place for a reason.
It ends up with entering different match types in same campaign
Shoving keywords of different match types into a single ad group is unlikely to be an issue if the ad group performs well, but at the campaign level, you need to separate multiple match types.
This separation is necessary because of how these different types of matches react to negatives (which, by the way, must be absolutely used). We don’t use negatives for exact match ad groups, but we need them for more open match types such as auto or broad. Implementing negatives in ad groups with multiple match types can lead to unintended results.
Furthermore, every match type has a different bidding approach. This is why you would not mix them up into a single campaign.
Keyword dumping starves your keywords and products.
Not all ad groups with too many keywords will be treated equally. If your ad group has too many keywords or products, only a few keywords or products will get enough impressions to see how they perform. To avoid this, you can give up on keywords that convert a lot simply because you don’t have the budget to get results. Conversely, you can invest in low-converting keywords that improve performance just because they generate impressions.
Having too many keywords drains your budget.
Keyword testing is expensive, and the more keywords you try, the higher the price you pay. Let’s say we want to allocate $20 to each keyword tested to measure the keyword’s performance. If you try 700 keywords at once, your advertising cost will be $14,000. When you get the results, you don’t have enough advertising dollars to handle the keywords that turn out to be converting.
It causes a disconnect between ad and keyword.
Amazon does not have a report showing which ads are showing for which search terms.
With organized ad groups, you at least have an idea of which products relate to which terms. On the other hand, if you have too many keywords or products, there’s no way of knowing what you’re looking for when you see a particular ad.
Leads to confusion in naming your ad group.
If you have 100 products and 500 keywords, how do you give your ad group a meaningful and descriptive name? The lack of organization in the campaign structure results in a rough and disorganized report.
Ways to choose keywords:
Now that you know what you shouldn’t do while choosing keywords for your ad campaign, we will now walk through some of the right ways to implement keywords to boost your ad performance.
Optimize the Keywords
After running the campaign for a week, check the report and select the keywords that have the highest conversion rate. Choose the most converting keywords and add them to exact match the “winners” campaign.
You can also check which keywords help achieve your target ACoS and take the ones which are not bringing enough sales off your list. If you are using AiHello AutoPilot all these tasks are handled automatically. You have to just select the “Winner” campaign in AutoPilot settings and AutoPilot will continuously monitor your campaigns and transfer high performing keywords.
Compare and Contrast
Optimization involves using relevant and effective keywords to ensure that your product is listed and recognized at the top of Amazon’s search engine results page (SERP). However, you need skills to come up with effective keywords that will help your product compete and stand out in the market without wasting your entire marketing budget.
One way to do this is to compare keywords with products for sale. Your product may be limited to industries where similar products compete in the same market. Imitation is important to capture as much as possible.
Check the keywords used by other competitors. If imitation is the key, then modification is the answer. You can modify the keywords a little here and there to see what works best for you. Then all you have to do is target those keywords to make sure your product stands out in the SERPs.
Choose alternative and similar keywords
A mistake that sellers often make when collecting keywords is restricting them too much. Let’s say you are selling AirPods. Keywords should not be limited to that particular product. We recommend that you expand your search to other similar devices such as AirPods Pro. The products don’t have to be the same, but related keywords may apply.
Use Amazon’s Keyword Tool to find relevant keywords that you can include in your product title or description.
Watch out for your competitors to learn from the best
One of the most effective ways to research and sort keywords and search terms is to use suggestions. To do this, enter the product brand or enter the Amazon Keyword Tool. This will give you ideas for words, terms, and even phrases that will help you generate keywords to sell your products. The results will give you hundreds of keyword suggestions that you can use with your main keywords for the product you’re trying to rank for.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is important to learn from the best. As you know, Amazon does a great job with generally useful keywords and SEO. It has its own proven SEO formula developed by SEO strategists and experts that you can use to sell your product.
After all, selling is primarily Amazon’s responsibility and should be as efficient as possible. What makes the Amazon Keyword Tool so effective is that it is specifically designed to extract and generate Amazon keywords so that FBA sellers can rank their products better.
Identify keywords for relevant products
Searching and browsing for products will require Amazon to show other similar products that may be of interest to you. This is called the Amazon Recommendation System, which sells by asking shoppers to convert regular browsers into customers or purchase other products that can complement the product they are buying. This is one of the best ways to keep the process open to achieving your goals.
The ultimate goal of FBA sellers is to maximize sales. Which means you’d want your products to appear as high as possible on Amazon search while also appearing regularly as suggested items in other product pages.
To do this, you need to do a little more analysis to find the right product for you. If you are selling shoes, you can add related keywords such as laces, shoe racks, and shoe polish. If you’re selling a sous vide, you might be talking about cookbooks, ziplock bags, or other sous vide-related accessories. Get the drift.
Once you have a list of similar or complementary products, enter them into Amazon’s Keyword Tool to select keywords with high search volume. Then include them in the Hidden Keywords section of your product listing and place them in the product description.
With this part sufficiently optimized, Amazon’s algorithms should be able to capture them and add them as recommended items in other Amazon product listings. And it will open up new sales channels for you and will certainly increase your potential revenue for your FBA business.
Take Away
The main way to get the optimal number of keywords for each ad group is to organize the keywords into different ad groups. The optimal number of keywords for each ad group is typically between 35 and 60 keywords, depending on the match type. You also start experiencing the same problem with a lack of keywords and a tight budget.
If you’re the victim of keyword or product dumping yourself, don’t panic-your campaign is still hopeful. Here’s how to handle too many keywords in your ad group:
- Remove poor performing keywords.
- Put them in a new ad group.
- Use this ad group for keyword research
By doing this, you’re entering these keywords into an RPSB keyword research strategy.
Stop downloading big keyword lists and shoving them into your campaigns. That will get you nowhere fast. Take the time to look through your keyword research results and determine which ones are actually relevant to your products.
Be more aware of which product ads are grouped by which keywords. Again, Amazon doesn’t have a report that matches the search term that triggered the product. You can save a lot of money on advertising by making sure the keywords you specify in your ad are related to your product. Taking an extra 25 minutes makes a difference in your campaign.
Finally, don’t chew more than you can chew when adding a target. If your budget is tight, you need a limited number of simple, easy-to-understand products and keywords.
In short, having too many keywords and products per ad group can cause a variety of problems with your PPC. From budget shortages to search confusion, keyword dumping blocks ad groups.
It’s very important to properly organize your ad groups and provide each ad group with the right number of keywords.
Make sure there is a reason for every product or keyword in every ad group. This will give each ad group a budget to reach its full potential and better understand which keywords are producing results.
