1) Define what “the right keywords” means for your business (before you open any tool)
Start with customer intent, not keyword volume
The fastest way to waste budget in Google Ads is to pick keywords that describe your industry, but not the searcher’s intent to buy, book, call, or request a quote. In practice, the “right” keywords are the ones that consistently bring you the right searches and land those people on a page that fulfils what they asked for.
When you brainstorm, think in terms of intent tiers. Your highest-intent keywords usually include a service/product + a qualifier (location, urgency, price, brand, model, “near me,” “same day,” “quote,” “install,” etc.). Your mid-intent keywords are often category terms (“running shoes,” “accounting software”), and your lowest-intent keywords are research-heavy (“best,” “how to,” “ideas,” “examples”) unless your business model supports that earlier-stage traffic.
Create a simple keyword-to-offer-to-landing-page map
Before building ad groups, decide what page should win for each theme. Google Ads is increasingly intent- and relevance-driven: the meaning of the search term, the collection of keywords in an ad group, and the landing pages tied to that ad group all influence which ad group is considered most relevant for a given query. If you don’t have a clear landing page per theme, you’ll feel like your “keyword targeting doesn’t work,” when the real issue is a mismatch between what the user typed and where you send them.
2) Build a keyword list that’s big enough to compete, but tight enough to control
Use Keyword Planner for discovery and forecasting (not just ideas)
Keyword Planner is still the most practical way to turn your brainstorming into a structured list, because it does two jobs: it helps you discover related keyword ideas and it lets you estimate potential traffic and cost so you can sense-check your targets.
Use it in two passes. First, generate ideas by starting with a small set of seed terms and/or starting with a website (your own or a competitor’s). Second, once you’ve shortlisted candidates, run forecasts on the list so you can sanity-check volume and cost expectations against your budget and conversion goals. Remember that forecasts are estimates; your actual performance will still depend on bidding, budgets, targeting, ad quality, and the day-to-day changes in your market.
If you’re struggling to organize the chaos, build up a decent-sized idea set before you start sorting. A too-small idea pool forces you into either overly generic keywords or overly narrow keywords that never trigger.
Structure campaigns when settings differ; structure ad groups when intent differs
Separate campaigns when you genuinely need different settings, like different budgets, locations, or other core controls. Keep one campaign when the settings can be shared. Then, inside each campaign, build ad groups around narrow themes. “Narrow theme” means the keywords belong on the same landing page and can share the same ad messaging without sounding generic.
A practical rule I’ve used for years: if you’d write a different headline to sound specific and relevant, it’s probably a different ad group. This matters because when someone searches a term that matches your keyword, an ad that clearly echoes what they searched for tends to earn better engagement—and engagement and relevance are foundational to efficient Search performance.
3) Choose match types strategically (and stop trying to “force” exact control)
Broad, phrase, and exact: what they really do today
Match types are not just formatting; they’re your reach and control levers.
Broad match is designed to find searches related to your keyword, including searches that don’t contain the exact words. To decide what’s “related,” it can consider signals like recent search activity, the content of your landing page, and other keywords in the ad group to interpret intent. Broad match is most reliable when paired with conversion-based Smart Bidding, because every query is different and bids need to adapt to auction-time signals.
Phrase match reaches searches that include the meaning of your keyword, where the meaning can be implied and the search can be a more specific version of that meaning. Phrase match behavior was modernized by folding in the old broad match modifier behavior (and broad match modifier notation is no longer created), so “phrase” is more meaning-based than many advertisers expect.
Exact match reaches searches with the same meaning or the same intent as your keyword. It gives the most control of the three, but it’s still intent-based, not “word-for-word.”
Close variants are always on (and you can’t opt out)
All match types are eligible to match to close variants, and there’s no opt-out. Close variants include things like misspellings, plural/singular forms, abbreviations, reordered words with the same meaning, implied words, paraphrases, and in many cases synonyms—provided the intent is considered the same. This is why experienced advertisers focus less on building “exhaustive keyword lists” and more on building clean themes, strong ads, and smart exclusions.
If you’re trying to “lock” a campaign to only literal wording, you’ll fight the system and you’ll lose efficiency. The better play is to accept intent-based matching and then shape the traffic through (1) match type choices, (2) Smart Bidding goals, (3) ad group theming, and (4) negatives.
Understand keyword prioritization so you don’t duplicate yourself into confusion
Many accounts are bloated with duplicate keywords because someone believes “more match types = more control.” In reality, broader match types capture the reach of narrower match types (and then some). You don’t need to repeat the same idea across a dozen keywords just to “be safe.”
When multiple keywords (or search themes) in the same account could match the same query, only one will enter the auction. For identical queries, the system prioritizes identical exact match first, then identical phrase/broad (and search themes), and then uses relevance signals to decide which ad group is most appropriate—followed by Ad Rank if there’s still a tie. There are exceptions (like eligibility issues or a campaign constrained by budget), but the takeaway is consistent: tight themes and clean structure beat keyword duplication.
4) Refine keyword selection after launch using real searches (this is where profits are made)
Use the Search terms report and Search terms insights together
Your best keyword ideas usually come from what your ads actually matched to. The Search terms report shows you the queries that triggered your ads and how they matched. In parallel, Search terms insights groups matching searches into intent-based categories and subcategories, with aggregated performance metrics, so you can spot themes without manually combing through every individual term. (It also accounts for categories that may not show as individual terms due to privacy thresholds.)
Use these two views for different jobs: the report is for precision actions (adding a negative, moving a term into its own ad group, finding a new exact/phrase candidate), while insights are for pattern recognition (new services to feature, new landing pages to build, new ad group themes to create).
Build a negative keyword strategy that blocks waste without choking growth
Negative keywords are your guardrails. The nuance most advertisers miss is that negative keywords don’t match to close variants or expansions the way positive keywords do. That means if you truly want to exclude a concept, you often need to include plural/singular versions and key synonyms intentionally. Also, negative match types (broad, phrase, exact) behave differently than their positive counterparts, so use them carefully to avoid accidentally blocking valuable traffic.
At a minimum, have a process for adding negatives at the right level. Campaign-level negatives are great when a term is universally irrelevant to that campaign’s offers. Ad group-level negatives are great for preventing overlap between closely related ad groups. If your account has a recurring “junk concept” that applies everywhere, account-level negative keywords can be a clean way to apply a global rule across eligible Search and Shopping inventory.
Most critical negative keyword checks (do these before scaling budget):
- Intent mismatches: “jobs,” “salary,” “free,” “DIY,” “definition,” “template,” “how to,” when they don’t align with your offer.
- Product/service mismatches: look-alike categories that share language (for example, products with the same noun but different meaning).
- Geo mismatches: locations you don’t serve that appear in queries.
- Brand control: if you need to separate brand and non-brand, don’t assume match type alone will do it—use negatives and/or brand controls appropriately.
Use Quality Score as a diagnostic lens for keyword decisions
When you’re deciding whether a keyword “belongs” in an ad group, Quality Score components help you diagnose the problem. Quality Score is reported on a 1–10 scale and is based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. If ad relevance is weak, it often means your ad group theme is too broad or your ads aren’t speaking the same language as the searcher. If landing page experience is weak, it often means the keyword is pointing at the wrong page, the page doesn’t satisfy the query, or the message doesn’t carry from ad to page.
The practical workflow is simple: when a keyword underperforms, don’t immediately delete it. First ask, “Is this the wrong keyword, the wrong match type, the wrong ad group, or the wrong landing page?” Most of the time, fixing the structure and message is what turns an ‘okay’ keyword into a profitable one.
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
| Step / Section | Main Objective | Key Principles & Takeaways | Practical Actions | Relevant Google Ads Features / Docs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1) Define what “the right keywords” means for your business | Get clear on which searches actually matter before touching tools or building campaigns. |
Focus on customer intent, not just search volume. The “right” keywords are those that:
|
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| 1.2) Create a keyword → offer → landing page map | Ensure every search theme lands on the most relevant page and ad message. |
Google evaluates intent and relevance across:
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| 2) Build a keyword list that’s big enough to compete, but tight enough to control | Turn brainstormed ideas into a structured, competitive keyword set without losing control. |
Keyword Planner is for both discovery and forecasting:
|
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| 2.2) Structure campaigns vs. ad groups | Use structure to control budgets/settings at the right level while keeping themes tight. |
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| 3) Choose match types strategically | Balance reach and control by using broad, phrase, and exact for intent—not for “literal” control. |
Match types are reach/control levers:
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| 3.2) Accept close variants (you can’t opt out) | Design for intent-based matching instead of trying to force literal word matches. |
All match types include close variants such as:
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| 3.3) Understand keyword prioritization & avoid duplication | Prevent bloated accounts and conflicting signals from duplicate keywords. |
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| 4) Refine keyword selection after launch using real searches | Use live query data to improve targeting, structure, and profitability. |
Your best keyword ideas come from the actual queries that triggered your ads:
|
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|
| 4.2) Build a smart negative keyword strategy | Block obvious waste while keeping room for valuable new queries. |
Key nuances:
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| 4.3) Use Quality Score as a diagnostic lens | Decide whether the issue is the keyword itself or the structure around it. |
Quality Score (1–10) is based on:
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If you’re working through keyword research and structure for Google Ads—mapping intent to landing pages, choosing match types, and refining with search-term data—Blobr can take a lot of the ongoing analysis off your plate by connecting to your Google Ads account and continuously spotting what’s driving results versus wasting spend. Its specialized AI agents can help with keyword discovery (e.g., generating new, relevant keyword ideas while avoiding duplicates and existing negatives) and with keyword-to-landing-page alignment (so each ad group stays tightly matched to a single theme and page), then turn those findings into clear, prioritized actions you can review and apply when you’re ready.
1) Define what “the right keywords” means for your business (before you open any tool)
Start with customer intent, not keyword volume
The fastest way to waste budget in Google Ads is to pick keywords that describe your industry, but not the searcher’s intent to buy, book, call, or request a quote. In practice, the “right” keywords are the ones that consistently bring you the right searches and land those people on a page that fulfils what they asked for.
When you brainstorm, think in terms of intent tiers. Your highest-intent keywords usually include a service/product + a qualifier (location, urgency, price, brand, model, “near me,” “same day,” “quote,” “install,” etc.). Your mid-intent keywords are often category terms (“running shoes,” “accounting software”), and your lowest-intent keywords are research-heavy (“best,” “how to,” “ideas,” “examples”) unless your business model supports that earlier-stage traffic.
Create a simple keyword-to-offer-to-landing-page map
Before building ad groups, decide what page should win for each theme. Google Ads is increasingly intent- and relevance-driven: the meaning of the search term, the collection of keywords in an ad group, and the landing pages tied to that ad group all influence which ad group is considered most relevant for a given query. If you don’t have a clear landing page per theme, you’ll feel like your “keyword targeting doesn’t work,” when the real issue is a mismatch between what the user typed and where you send them.
2) Build a keyword list that’s big enough to compete, but tight enough to control
Use Keyword Planner for discovery and forecasting (not just ideas)
Keyword Planner is still the most practical way to turn your brainstorming into a structured list, because it does two jobs: it helps you discover related keyword ideas and it lets you estimate potential traffic and cost so you can sense-check your targets.
Use it in two passes. First, generate ideas by starting with a small set of seed terms and/or starting with a website (your own or a competitor’s). Second, once you’ve shortlisted candidates, run forecasts on the list so you can sanity-check volume and cost expectations against your budget and conversion goals. Remember that forecasts are estimates; your actual performance will still depend on bidding, budgets, targeting, ad quality, and the day-to-day changes in your market.
If you’re struggling to organize the chaos, build up a decent-sized idea set before you start sorting. A too-small idea pool forces you into either overly generic keywords or overly narrow keywords that never trigger.
Structure campaigns when settings differ; structure ad groups when intent differs
Separate campaigns when you genuinely need different settings, like different budgets, locations, or other core controls. Keep one campaign when the settings can be shared. Then, inside each campaign, build ad groups around narrow themes. “Narrow theme” means the keywords belong on the same landing page and can share the same ad messaging without sounding generic.
A practical rule I’ve used for years: if you’d write a different headline to sound specific and relevant, it’s probably a different ad group. This matters because when someone searches a term that matches your keyword, an ad that clearly echoes what they searched for tends to earn better engagement—and engagement and relevance are foundational to efficient Search performance.
3) Choose match types strategically (and stop trying to “force” exact control)
Broad, phrase, and exact: what they really do today
Match types are not just formatting; they’re your reach and control levers.
Broad match is designed to find searches related to your keyword, including searches that don’t contain the exact words. To decide what’s “related,” it can consider signals like recent search activity, the content of your landing page, and other keywords in the ad group to interpret intent. Broad match is most reliable when paired with conversion-based Smart Bidding, because every query is different and bids need to adapt to auction-time signals.
Phrase match reaches searches that include the meaning of your keyword, where the meaning can be implied and the search can be a more specific version of that meaning. Phrase match behavior was modernized by folding in the old broad match modifier behavior (and broad match modifier notation is no longer created), so “phrase” is more meaning-based than many advertisers expect.
Exact match reaches searches with the same meaning or the same intent as your keyword. It gives the most control of the three, but it’s still intent-based, not “word-for-word.”
Close variants are always on (and you can’t opt out)
All match types are eligible to match to close variants, and there’s no opt-out. Close variants include things like misspellings, plural/singular forms, abbreviations, reordered words with the same meaning, implied words, paraphrases, and in many cases synonyms—provided the intent is considered the same. This is why experienced advertisers focus less on building “exhaustive keyword lists” and more on building clean themes, strong ads, and smart exclusions.
If you’re trying to “lock” a campaign to only literal wording, you’ll fight the system and you’ll lose efficiency. The better play is to accept intent-based matching and then shape the traffic through (1) match type choices, (2) Smart Bidding goals, (3) ad group theming, and (4) negatives.
Understand keyword prioritization so you don’t duplicate yourself into confusion
Many accounts are bloated with duplicate keywords because someone believes “more match types = more control.” In reality, broader match types capture the reach of narrower match types (and then some). You don’t need to repeat the same idea across a dozen keywords just to “be safe.”
When multiple keywords (or search themes) in the same account could match the same query, only one will enter the auction. For identical queries, the system prioritizes identical exact match first, then identical phrase/broad (and search themes), and then uses relevance signals to decide which ad group is most appropriate—followed by Ad Rank if there’s still a tie. There are exceptions (like eligibility issues or a campaign constrained by budget), but the takeaway is consistent: tight themes and clean structure beat keyword duplication.
4) Refine keyword selection after launch using real searches (this is where profits are made)
Use the Search terms report and Search terms insights together
Your best keyword ideas usually come from what your ads actually matched to. The Search terms report shows you the queries that triggered your ads and how they matched. In parallel, Search terms insights groups matching searches into intent-based categories and subcategories, with aggregated performance metrics, so you can spot themes without manually combing through every individual term. (It also accounts for categories that may not show as individual terms due to privacy thresholds.)
Use these two views for different jobs: the report is for precision actions (adding a negative, moving a term into its own ad group, finding a new exact/phrase candidate), while insights are for pattern recognition (new services to feature, new landing pages to build, new ad group themes to create).
Build a negative keyword strategy that blocks waste without choking growth
Negative keywords are your guardrails. The nuance most advertisers miss is that negative keywords don’t match to close variants or expansions the way positive keywords do. That means if you truly want to exclude a concept, you often need to include plural/singular versions and key synonyms intentionally. Also, negative match types (broad, phrase, exact) behave differently than their positive counterparts, so use them carefully to avoid accidentally blocking valuable traffic.
At a minimum, have a process for adding negatives at the right level. Campaign-level negatives are great when a term is universally irrelevant to that campaign’s offers. Ad group-level negatives are great for preventing overlap between closely related ad groups. If your account has a recurring “junk concept” that applies everywhere, account-level negative keywords can be a clean way to apply a global rule across eligible Search and Shopping inventory.
Most critical negative keyword checks (do these before scaling budget):
- Intent mismatches: “jobs,” “salary,” “free,” “DIY,” “definition,” “template,” “how to,” when they don’t align with your offer.
- Product/service mismatches: look-alike categories that share language (for example, products with the same noun but different meaning).
- Geo mismatches: locations you don’t serve that appear in queries.
- Brand control: if you need to separate brand and non-brand, don’t assume match type alone will do it—use negatives and/or brand controls appropriately.
Use Quality Score as a diagnostic lens for keyword decisions
When you’re deciding whether a keyword “belongs” in an ad group, Quality Score components help you diagnose the problem. Quality Score is reported on a 1–10 scale and is based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. If ad relevance is weak, it often means your ad group theme is too broad or your ads aren’t speaking the same language as the searcher. If landing page experience is weak, it often means the keyword is pointing at the wrong page, the page doesn’t satisfy the query, or the message doesn’t carry from ad to page.
The practical workflow is simple: when a keyword underperforms, don’t immediately delete it. First ask, “Is this the wrong keyword, the wrong match type, the wrong ad group, or the wrong landing page?” Most of the time, fixing the structure and message is what turns an ‘okay’ keyword into a profitable one.
