Level Up Your Google Ads Game: Mastering Broad Keywords for Beginners

My strategy with keywords is usually to go very broad in the beginning and monitor what is happening. Be ready to pause keywords that waste your budget. It's also a good strategy to prepare a negative keywords list before starting, before going live with the campaign.

What Are Broad Keywords?

As you can see in The Google Ads Guide Quickstart, broad keywords will harvest everything. What does "harvest everything" mean? Broad keywords tell Google to show your ads for anything with some similarity to your keyword. It could even be a very different phrase but with the same meaning.

We will check the official documentation in the next video, but keep in mind that this can be very dangerous because you can attract unwanted clicks and visitors. A good example is people looking for free stuff. Most of my campaigns have "free" as a negative keyword from the start.

Why Broad Keywords Are Useful

Broad keywords are valuable because they can give us insight into search volumes. They reveal what people are actually looking for without being too specific. We might discover that people are searching for our product with variations or specific attributes. That's why it's important to start with broad keywords and gradually refine them with negative keywords.

Four Things to Understand in the First Days

In the first days of our campaign, we want to understand these four key points:

1. If users are actually looking for your product - whether they're actively searching for what you're offering and if there's demand. The keyword planner can provide this information, but it's not real-time. Perhaps you're offering something that's just gaining popularity, or you have a seasonal product. That's crucial. When broad keywords start generating user interest in your solution, you know there's potential.
2. Understanding who you're competing with through the auction insights. Initially, we use these keywords without separating them into ad groups based on semantics. While organizing them from the beginning could be beneficial, we'll explore this advanced tactic later. In the early stages, it's often better to have one group with several ads and collect search terms. We'll learn how to develop and interpret them.
3. What they're actually looking for. For example, if you have an AI audio summarizer, users might be searching for a YouTube summarizer. Though you don't offer that specific service, you might see an opportunity. This insight comes from analyzing search terms.
4. Geographic performance differences. As you explore different regions and audiences, you might find that your cost per acquisition is excellent in the US or Australia, while Europe shows less interest. This could be due to various factors - new regulations, different rules, or competitors dominating the market. These variables are impossible to predict, which is why testing is essential with Google Ads.