The world of PPC has shifted to a new era: an era where automation and machine-learning bidding are the new kings, and the little advertiser is merely a pawn within that game.
Do we still need PPC managers or PPC agencies? Can gain control over our Google Ads campaigns? Are the old “winning tricks” (aka SKAG) still relevant? Let’s see.

RISE OF THE INTENT

Up until 2-3 years ago, if an advertiser wanted to dominate the search results, he should have had 2 main things: sufficient ad-spend, and highly optimized campaigns that deployed SKAGs. It was not uncommon to see PPC campaigns on Google Ads that had dozens of single keyword ad groups, that covered the most desired keywords and their match types.
Back then – to win in PPC, you had to conduct a deep keywords research, and focus on the ones that are likely to drive most relevant traffic. And it was easy! Google honored the various match types, so the optimization and testing were a breeze: you could easily see which match type triggered most conversions, and optimize accordingly. However, all that has changed ever since Google has shifted its PPC algorithm to work on “user intent”, and honor less the various match types.

THE DEATH OF SKAG

The simple explanation of this major game-changer is that now Google could potentially trigger ads based on “similar keywords” rather than honoring their actual match types. This change was published loud and clear by Google, yet for some reason, tons of agencies and advertisers are refusing to accept it.
The reasoning behind this is quite simple actually: Google’s AI capabilities have advanced and matured, and came to a fruition enabling them to ‘guess’ the user’s intent in most cases, based on behavior (search history patterns, interests, geo-locations, etc.) rather then the exact search keywords.
If a users is looking for “buy blue shoes” then all of a sudden, different keyword, say “purchase blue shoes online” could trigger one’s ad.
As you can see, different keywords can now trigger the same ads – an the match-type has also become somewhat irrelevant.
With that, the SKAG strategy, that is strictly based on match-types, rather than intent, is no longer valid.

BYE BYE BMM

In addition to the above, the final nail in SKAGs coffin, and keyword match type based campaigns, was the deprecation of the broad match modifier (BMM), that used to be even a a quicker win for failing PPC campaigns.
It actually makes sense – if Google is no longer honoring the match types, who needs the BMM now anyways? So with that, we definitely need to rethink the PPC strategy from the ground up.

HOW TO WIN PPC IN 2021?

The great news is that these changes filtered out a lot of stupid PPC managers and left them in complete confusion. Now, there’s gotta be a logic in the strategy, a clear keyword footprint that consists of just a few keywords rather than thousands. We now gotta pay close attention to negative keywords and base our campaign structure on what has come to be know as SIAG – single intent ad groups.
This structure captures a single intent into one ad groups, and uses similar keywords in phrase and exact match types. The ads copy should contain the intent, and we must look closely at the search term reports and add negative keywords constantly.

10 TIPS FOR WINNING PPC IN 2021

1. if your PPC campaigns are still utilizing SKAGs – and they’re working and driving clicks – they could probably work better for the same budget. The initial step is to plan a logical intent based structure of the PPC campaigns.
2. create a fresh keywords portfolio that contains 20 of your top keywords. Don’t worry about the match types.
3. break down the keyword list to intent based ad groups. It is super important that an ad group would resonate on one general intent. “General Intent” is the winning approach here.
4. apply the intent keywords in the ad groups. I’d suggest to use both match types for each keywords: exact and phrase
5. ads – pull the best KPIs from the running ads, and create new ads that contain the intent keywords. DSA are usually the winning ads, so start from these.
6. be careful of broad match keywords – these may cause, oftentimes, major spend bleed, and drive irrelevant traffic
7. constantly review the search terms report. Add new keywords accordingly.
8. constantly and obsessively add negative keywords, to ‘teach’ Google’s algo on what is most relevant for our goals
9. CPC and CPAs: if you’ll apply both match types, you could determine which keyword works the best (that the only similarity to SKAGs) and at what cost. Optimize accordingly.
10. Google Ad Suggestions: another trick by Google to take away the control. Opt out to avoid spend leaks.

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