How The Role Of Keywords Has Changed In 2023

I’m writing this article for anyone who is not up to date on how Google Ads works in 2023, because, for a long time, selecting the right keywords was the primary key to success in Google Ads.

The goal of the ads manager was to identify which keyword variations led to the best returns and develop campaigns that honed in on those high-performing keywords. Though, now, as Google has continuously developed its machine learning algorithms, for most businesses, hyper-targeted keyword strategies aren’t optimal.

• Exceptions include local service-based businesses, new product launches, and businesses with very small budgets or less than 20-30 conversions per month.

The first half of this article will justify the use of looser keyword targeting over stricter keyword targeting; the second half of the article will cover the many targeting strategies in Google Ads outside of keywords. Overall, the goal of the blog is to clarify that while keywords are still very important, there are other tools in the toolbox, and using the other them can have a very positive impact on the success of a campaign.

The Role of Keywords Isn’t What It Used To Be

In the current state of today’s Google Ads, it’s less about which keyword is the best and more about WHO is searching the keyword.

There’s a huge difference between someone who is searching for “low-cut basketball shoes” for the first time and someone who has visited Nike.com, added a pair of basketball shoes to their shopping cart, abandoned the order, searched “low-cut basketball shoes” again, visited Adidas, left Adidas, and is now searching “low-cut basketball shoes” AGAIN.

And Google’s algorithm is well aware of everything I just described, it has the data.

It knows that this person is looking to make a decision. It knows that this user has a high chance to convert for Nike, and it may want to bid 2-3x more than its usual amount for this particular keyword (more on this below).

It’s a powerful technology, capable of facilitating extremely high-performing campaigns, BUT — what if the user doesn’t search “low-cut basketball shoes” .. what if they search something like “basketball shoes for point guards?”

If you’re running an exact/phrase match search campaign, and you aren’t targeting something close to “basketball shoes for point guards”.. you might’ve just dropped out of the competition for this customer.

For that reason, in most situations, I recommend casting a wide net with a list of broad-match keywords. Sure, they’ll bid on some weird stuff sometimes, but by continuously updating your list of negative keywords, that problem goes away over time.

Broad match gives the algorithm the most room to make decisions based on user data and as the hypothetical above illustrates, targeting in a Google Ads campaign is really more about the user than it is the keyword.

Here’s a real-world example, there was a shopping campaign I was running that had a budget of $40 a day. One day, on the first of the month, I log into Google Ads and immediately notice my campaign was out of budget.. and it only had… ONE CLICK.

I was horrified.

This was a variation of a search term that the campaign typically spends $1-2 on. What on earth just happened?

It turns out — something that Google knew and I didn’t. Later in the day, the conversion data was processed and it turned out the click led to an $800 sale.

It’s situations like the one above that’ve shown me, the role of keywords has changed. They’re very targeted pointers, they guide Google in the right direction.

It’s still our job, as humans, to make sure that algorithm is able to move in the right direction and prevent it from going too far off course via bidding strategy adjustments, negative keywords, campaign structure, etc., but we have to give the algorithm enough rope to work with.

Non-keyword Driven Targeting Methods

In addition to the shift towards “more flexible keywords” over “less flexible” keywords, Google Ads provides many alternative (or supplementary) approaches to targeting users.

Below are four non-keyword-driven ways you can alter to alter a campaign’s audience targeting.

1) The Impact Of Bidding Strategy On Targeting

The bidding strategy you choose plays a very significant role in your overall targeting.

There are plenty of bidding strategies to choose from in Google Ads.

Each strategy has a unique impact on the way your ads are served to users.

For example, if you choose the ‘maximize clicks’ strategy, Google will serve your ads much more frequently (and at a lower cost per click) than if you choose to bid according to a target ROAS.

In a maximize clicks setup, all Google is considering is the likelihood someone will click on your advertisement and visit your website. This makes the ‘maximize clicks’ strategy great for top-of-funnel campaigns, but unideal for bottom-of-funnel campaigns.

For a BOF campaign, it makes more sense to use something like target ROAS. A target ROAS campaign considers the likelihood a user will convert, the cost of their click, and the conversion value of your product to achieve the target ROAS you assign to the campaign.

Though, it’s important to be reasonable when assigning a target ROAS. If you set it to something like 1,600%.. it’s likely that at the end of the month, only a fraction of your total budget will be spent.

The reason is that Google just won’t be able to find enough situations where it can show your ad and have the chance to achieve a 1,600% ROAS, so it won’t serve your ads at all.

2) Remarketing Audiences

Remarketing audiences are audiences of users who have already engaged with your ads or website. Thanks to Google Analytics, you can create extremely granular remarketing audiences.

For example, a SaaS company could target users who have viewed a specific landing page in the last 30 days but have not signed up for a free trial.

• Disclaimer: for companies without a substantial amount of web traffic, these more-granular audiences are often too small to serve ads to.

Additionally, eCommerce companies can target viewers of a specific product, with an advertisement for that product, using something called dynamic remarketing. In other words, if a customer views a specific t-shirt, you can show them ads for that t-shirt.

3) Other Website Visitors (competitors)

In addition to being able to target users who have visited our own websites, we can target users who’ve visited competitors’ websites as well.

This strategy becomes even more powerful when it’s blended together with keywords. For example, Adidas may run a campaign targeted at users who’ve visited Nike in the last 7 days AND are searching for “light weight running shoes.”

4) Performance Max

Performance Max deserves its own post, as it is a completely different type of campaign than anything else available in Google, but I’ll touch briefly on its targeting.

Essentially, if trying out broad match keywords or smart bidding is dipping your toes into Google’s AI, Performance Max is a canon ball off the high dive. With performance max, you don’t even tell Google what to target. Instead, you give it a SUGGESTION, or as Google calls it, a signal.

Performance Max will then take that signal and use it as a starting place. It’ll test the ad creative against the audiences provided, and then, as it learns more, it will add new audiences, and possibly even abandon the audience signals entirely.

This may sound scary, but fortunately, it’s making these decisions based on its ML algorithm, and it can actually be a good thing. I have had a couple of occasions where Google’s Performance Max campaign has targeted an audience I wouldn’t have thought of - and it turns out the audience actually makes a lot of sense.

Disclaimer: Currently, Performance Max works best for eCommerce companies. Businesses running lead-gen campaigns would likely be better off using any of the other targeting strategies listed above.

Disclaimer 2: Established brands should know that when possible, Pmax tends to avoid cold audiences. It may “steal” conversions from other campaigns and perform poorly at reaching new customers.

Wrapping it all up

I wanted to write this article because, in the conversations I’ve had, I’ve noticed most people’s view of Google ads is limited to keywords, and there’s so much more to Google Ads than that.

I’m not trying to downplay the importance of good keywords (I explain my approach to keyword research here). I’m just making the argument that with the way the algorithm works today, there are a lot of other factors at play, and ignoring them to focus solely on keywords, would be leaving money on the table in most cases.