Single keyword ad groups (hereinafter referred to as SKAGs), that is, a single keyword ad group, is a Google advertising campaign with high usage rate and high cost performance, which has obvious effects on improving the exposure, click-through rate and conversion rate of advertisements. . Google\’s policy changes have made the configuration of SKAGs more difficult and reduced the controllability of expenses. Johnathan Dane, the founder of KlientBoost, made a video explaining the use of SKAGs as early as 2018. To this day, Dane himself is still very satisfied with the advertising effect of SKAGs. Dane lists several advantages of SKAGs in the video:
- Increase click-through rate
- Improve Quality Score
- Increase exposure
- Lower cost per click
- Lower cost per acquisition
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\”Advertisers need to realize the real value of granular granularity,\” Dane said. \”Keywords are controllable, but search terms are uncontrollable, but only the same people will pay. So when When the search term does not match the keyword, it will cost you money.” In Google Ads, search keywords (search keywords) or keywords in the background are the words that advertisers target or bid on, and they need to bid. Search terms are words entered in the search box.
To set up SKAGs in Google Ads, you must first have a root keyword with 1 to 3 words. An example might be \”mens running shoes\”. In the past, posters would check broad match, use the plus sign as a hyphen, \”+mens + running +shoes\”, or quote the phrase match, \”mens running shoes\”.
This string of keywords will generate ad groups. The ad copy will be relevant to it, and it will be reflected in the headline.
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The main function of SKAGs is to include accurate keywords in the title of the ad. After SKAG has been running for a period of time, advertisers turn to look for long-tail keywords that drive the most traffic and use them in advertising campaigns. For example, \”blue size 14 mens running shoe\” is an important long-tail keyword. This string of words also generates a SKAG and is included in the original SKAGs (“mens running shoes”) as negative keywords, preventing the repetition of keywords. The publisher will repeat this screening process. By the end, an account will end up containing several ad campaigns, each with hundreds of SKAGs.
The operation of SKAGs relies on the advertiser\’s fine-grained control of keywords and how they are represented in ad copy. Google Ads has changed the pattern of keyword matching over the past 10 years. In 2012, Google introduced similar variants for exact match and phrase match, meaning similar words may be matched automatically, and until 2014, advertisers could not cancel the automatic match.
In March 2017, the range of similar variants was further expanded, allowing for changing the order of words and filtering out function words. Now, under exact match, search for \”running shoes\” and \”shoes for running\”. Exact match includes synonyms by 2018, expanding to broad match and phrase match 1 year later. In February 2021, Google Ads began merging phrase match and broad match. By July 2021, broad match has been eliminated.
Darren Taylor, who runs the SEM Academy, runs \”The Big Marketer\” on YouTube and is an advocate for SKAGs, has recently shown the opposite. He believes that using SKAGs ad groups is not necessarily the best way to build a PPC campaign, as Google doesn\’t allow it to leverage Google\’s algorithms to optimize itself. Some marketers have started using single, more precise ad groups of 1-5 words. However, the effect of advertising still needs the actual use of the poster to know whether the effect is good or not. Whether SKAGs will fade out of the historical stage is still unclear.