When it comes to promoting your website on the internet and getting results from your campaigns on Google Ads, a publicity service which among other things allows you to appear in the best positions in Google search results, it’s important to choose your keywords well, just as you do when you work on the SEO for your website to get well-positioned by Google.

When choosing keywords to activate your ads, you should bear in mind which words your potential customers might use when carrying out a search in Google. Take into account that your ad will appear in the search when the keyword you’ve chosen for your campaign coincides with the word typed in by the person looking for your products and services.

The recommendation is to choose between 5 and 20 keywords. To choose these, you need to analyse the business services and products you’re offering and how you would look for them with Google. Think about the words and phrases which best describe each of the categories which your business embodies.

If, for instance, you have a cafeteria, you might like to think of terms such as “cafeteria” and build on this to add things like “best breakfast”, “where to have a coffee”, “cafeteria Sants” (or the neighbourhood your business is in.

The more specific, the better

Think of words to connect with a specific user, this way you can reach a customer who is interested in a very specific product. You can run specific ads with keywords such as “best croissant in Barcelona”, “best sourdough bread” or “vegan cakes”, for people specifically looking for this product.

Create different groups of ads according to keywords

For ads to become relevant and reach customers with an interest in your products and services, it’s a good idea to group together keywords to match the different areas or categories of your business.

If you add a keyword in the same group of ads, a customer looking for “vegan cakes” might see your “cafeteria in Sants” ad when this might not really fit in with what they’re searching for. The best way is to group ads together by topic, thinking how they might be replaced or be of interest to a customer searching for one of the keywords or phrases in the same group of ads.

Don’t forget negative words

You probably won’t want your ads to display to people looking for a product or service which is not linked to your business. Because of this, you can add negative keywords to your list. This will stop your ads from appearing in searches which are of no interest to you and is a good way of cutting costs. To mark negative keywords you need to put the symbol – in front of the word in question.

Bear in mind concordance for Google Ads

Google Ads doesn’t simply take into account the keyword you add to your list. The words you add do not always correspond to those which users type in for their searches.

• Broad concordance: this is the default option. It allows an ad to display when search words and phrases are similar to those you added as keywords. This includes relevant variations and synonyms of your keywords.

• Exact match: this option only allows ads to display when the user’s search includes the word or phrase you established as a keyword. To choose this option you simply need to put the word or phrase between inverted commas.

For instance, if you choose “cafeteria Sants” as a keyword, when somebody looks for “cafeteria Badalona” or “haberdashery Sants” it’s unlikely that your ad will appear on the search results page. Yet if you put the keyword “cafeteria Sants”, it will only appear when the search includes the phrase “cafeteria Sants”.