Simplifying? is it always good?

[Mark_A]

My Ads account has become very diverse and hard to manage.
I have gone after long tail keywords resulting in bids on many hundreds of keywords, many of which don't generate any impressions, over years.

I have been recommended, because I have a limited budget, to cut right back to a handful of essential keywords which generate business for the company and then to focus on those.

What do you think?

[tangor]

Clearing out the chaff can have a beneficial effect in allowing one to re-evaluate past practices and develop new ones.

Even more important when the budget is limited!

[RhinoFish]

When bidding on very low volume keywords, one by one, you've fallen for the "small datasets" over optimization scenario.
Lump those low volume long tail KWs with similar words, bid them as a group.

And, thinking that chasing long tail very low volume KWs will work out well, you might be imagining not everyone is chasing them... they are, via Phrase and Mod Broad, and even near Exacts. The long tail very low volume KW game doesn't scale well as a result, and bidding it with any accuracy is also not possible,

At one end, a single Broad match KW...
At the other end, a huge amount of very low volume, long tail KWs...
Both of these extremes are impossible to optimize.

Tangor is correct, you have a great opportunity here, to clean things up as you revamp. :-)
Focus on Exact, 3 and 4 word Phrase, and 3 or more word Mod Broads.

If you find yourself in the 4 word KW area, you're at the limit of things.
If you get to 5 words, you've gone way too far.

"I have been recommended, because I have a limited budget, to cut right back to a handful of essential keywords which generate business for the company and then to focus on those."
I disagree with this.
You can and should have a large keyword inventory, you just need to group them well.
My team only very rarely bids at the KW level, most often we bid at the Ad Group level and higher.
If you feel somewhat lost and results are not good, then the "back out to a handful of core KWs" is good advice.

I would add that once you do have a large keyword inventory and an array of match types, Negative KWs are just as important as Positive KWs.
And again, using Negs well, requires good grouping of positive KWs into well structured Ad Groups.

[Mark_A]

Hi @Tangor

Clearing out the chaff can have a beneficial effect in allowing one to re-evaluate past practices and develop new ones.

Even more important when the budget is limited!

Thank you for your response. I do see the benefit of getting rid of KW where there have been no, or almost no, impressions in the last few years, they were a gamble which didn't come off, deleting them tidies up the account. I started with about 580 kw, after deleting the zero impressions ones and pausing those with low quality scores (quite a few) I now have 140 enabled kw.

I need to refocus the ads for those with low quality scores and be sure that they have impressions enough to continue with them.

[Mark_A]

Hi RhinoFish, thank you for your response, am reading it carefully to be sure I understand you.

[tangor]

Do the bread and butter. Then the main fill. That's your meal. If you have the time (and the wealth) add other things to make the bite more entertaining.

In other words: Keep it simple. Select. And to the point.

Your wallet is only so big but the ad world will eat all you have in an instant---and you will be left hungry.

Buy what you can eat. All ad dollars are EXPENSE, not a bonus.

[Mark_A]

It is starting to make more sense as I am pruning it.

Also I was recommended to try an automated bidding strategy, for example "maximise clicks" .. I am much less sure about this, I just don't trust G. So far I have maintained an average CPC which I am comfortable with by cutting back any bids that tend to be too high. I don't mind doing it manually because high cpc are just offensive to me. Do any of you use G automated bidding?

[RhinoFish]

They should have named Maximize Clicks as...

Please spend my entire daily budget anyway you can, where you may have a choice, try to get the most clicks possible, ignore traffic quality because I'm not looking for outcomes like sales or signups, I just want the highest count of visitors I can get, within my fully spend daily budget, without any regard for the ability to convert or otherwise be of value besides traffic count, high CPCs don't concern me, nor does traffic quality matter...

But you can see, that's a pretty long winded name... so they just went with Maximize Clicks.

PS... so that's likely a "no" for most people, though if your goal is to drive the most clicks each day, while spending your full daily budget, it's perfect for you. :-)

[RhinoFish]

More on how Maximize Clicks works:
[support.google.com...]

[Mark_A]

@RhinoFish I am so glad your feelings on G Maximise Clicks supports me, thank you, I will ignore that recommendation!

[Mark_A]

I have done a lot of simplifying, it is now easier to manage. I added a responsive ad to all Ad Groups, changed my budget around until now nothing is restricted by budget, my optimisation scores are now all in the 80%s.

Wondering about putting a small budget into remarketing. I am dubious but, what is your experience with remarketing?

[RhinoFish]

Remarketing has less incremental value, bid it like your Branded Search...
So, a decent starting point might be (your ideal balance will vary)...
Remarketing = 5x ROAS
Branded Search = 5x ROAS
Unbranded Search = 2.5x ROAS