There’s a good chance Granularization isn’t actually a word, yet. However the principle behind it is more important to your Adwords account than the actual existence of the word, kind of like ‘truthiness.’
The more specialized your ad group, the more effective your campaign will be.
That’s my campaign building mantra. A common mistake people make in setting up their accounts is to decide on campaign topics and then throw all the related words in one ad group. I call this the ‘Bucket Approach.’ Once all your words are in the bucket, your ad or ads will be shown for any keyword in the bucket. Because of this you’re going to have to write a pretty generic ad. This is going to hurt your relevance, quality score, click through rate, and ultimately your wallet.
Now I’m not saying you can’t use a ‘bucket’ group every once and a while, it has its uses. They can be good for testing the impression levels of new words for an existing account. After they’ve gained some data you’ll be able to tell if the words deserve their own ad groups, should be dropped completely, or may be fit for an existing ad group.
So how do you set up your account for maximum effectiveness?
Granularization.
Keyword research is a lot of work, and you’re going to amass lots and lots of words. Having the right words is just the first step… fight the urge to toss them in a bucket! Start looking for themes and key root words in your list. Divide it into as many reasonable, logical, relevant groups as you can.
One example of granularizing a campaign is if you carry foreign languages. An ad group that covers all of them at once isn’t going to be very effective, but if you break it into 1 or more ad groups per language you’re going to do much better. Your word groupings will be tighter, your quality score should be higher, and your ad can be more targeted and thus get better click through rates. If a query for “Learn Swedish” triggers ads for “Learn a Language” and “Learn Swedish Today” you can guess which one is going to perform better. “Learn Swedish Today” is more relevant to the search engine and the searcher. You get the click because you’re giving the people what they want.
Kick the bucket, Granularize, and give the people what they want!
Those three things will help you succeed in the PPC game. Put in a little extra work up front in structuring good campaigns and delivering relevant solutions to user queries PPC, and you’ll be able to break out your old bucket to carry money all the way to the bank.