How to Ensure Your Google Ads Keywords Have the Correct Intent

Key Takeaways

• Adding Intent Terms in the Keyword - Using specific terms like "buy" can target intent but may limit volume.
• Using Conversion Data on Broad Terms - Smart Bidding with accurate conversion data enables broader targeting and scalability.
• Common Issues - Each approach has pros and cons, including challenges like limited traffic or overspending.

Targeting the right keyword is a crucial part of delivering leads, sales and most importantly profit.

If your Google Ads keywords are too broad or unrelated, then you will spend a lot of money on traffic that doesn’t convert.

If your keyword targeting is too focussed, then you will likely be missing out on volume that could 5-10x your sales.

Intent in keyword targeting is something that’s changed a huge amount over the past few years. Previously the search query itself would be used as the sole indicator of intent.

With Smart Bidding, even a very broad term can have high intent to enquire or buy, when it’s paired with ample, accurate, conversion data.

In this article, we are going to walk you through how to ensure that your PPC keywords have the correct intent so that you can drive performance for your business.

We will show you the pros and cons of the most common approaches and how to apply them effectively to your business.

Adding Intent Terms in the Keyword

Approach one is to use just the search query itself to qualify the intent.

Years ago, we would presume that queries containing ‘buy’ or ‘best’ would carry more user intent.

The search experience then wasn’t where it is now. With advances in machine learning, hardware in devices and mobile data coverage improving, we’ve grown to expect more from our search experience. We know that if we search ‘coffee’ we will be presented with the nearest option. Previously, we had to add the qualifier ‘near me’.

A handful of users still search in this older fashion, so there are some hyper targeted, relevant terms to go after.

If you do only this though, you will be missing out on the majority of search and therefore sales volume for your business.

I’d always recommend starting with this approach if you’re new to ads or have a limited budget. You can always broaden out a narrow targeted campaign to get more volume. You can’t always narrow in, if you’ve gone too broad and spent the budget.

Having the qualifier in the keyword also means you have robust traffic to use as a control for the website conversion rate.

If this traffic doesn’t convert, it's more likely that there are issues with proposition and website experience, than there is with the campaign side settings.

Work on the post-click elements, see traction and then broaden targeting further.

In terms of match types, you can take the same approach.

Only targeting keywords which include ‘buy’ on exact match during keyword research will lead to you only getting a few clicks and minimal conversions

Moving to phrase match can allow the system to start showing you terms which have the same intent but are broader in how they look.

Again, it’s always easier to broaden than it is to narrow.

The key takeaway of any search activity is to know that someone actively searched for what your keyword says.

There’s no other intent signal like that, the action behind the query speaks as much for the intent as the words themselves.

Using Conversion Data on Broad Terms

The second option to ensure you have intent on your keywords in Google Ads is to use conversion data and the amazing power of Smart Bidding.

This is the approach that your account notifications and Google rep will be pushing you to take your ads.

It’s valid as when it works, the sales or lead volume can be so significantly higher, it can literally transform your business.

Broad match is the only match type that can tap into amazing data signals such as browsing history.

To go back to our first example, which user has more intent?

The answer is potentially both.

There will be far more volume and scalability on use case two, the challenge will be ensuring that you have that data on top of the broad query.

To achieve this, you must have accurate and ample conversion data.

If the conversion action you’re tracking isn’t a lead or sale, if it’s misfiring or not tracking at all then you’re feeding in the wrong input and will get the wrong output.

As the old computer science adage goes ‘garbage in, garbage out’.

This is where learning phases as you may have heard are important. Once the campaign is seeing steady and quality conversion data, you’re no longer bidding just for the query, now you’re able to bid with the knowledge of all of the demographics around your previous converters, people they look like, their browsing history and much more.

Google says the learning phase is typically 7-14 days from a campaign being live.

We see in the team that this can take much longer in some cases. If you are seeing approximately 30 conversions per month over a 90 day period then you’re likely to be able to broaden your keyword targeting.

Doing this beforehand puts you at risk of showing on irrelevant terms. If there are conversion rate issues also, you now have another variable in the mix which makes troubleshooting more difficult.

Start narrow and then broaden out.

Once you’re seeing steady performance, test going broader to maximise the balance between intent and scalability.

Common Issues

We’ve covered the benefits and pitfalls of both approaches in a fair amount of detail.

Let’s now look at some very common issues as use cases:

Example 1: Restricted keyword targeting i.e only keywords which contain ‘buy’

This is where you’re trying to solely use the query itself to define intent in the traffic.

Pros: You know for sure that not only is every user actively searching for the product or service that you are promoting, you also know that they have some intent to ‘buy’. You can use this traffic to test your proposition and hopefully see a few conversions before broadening out.

Cons: Only a handful of users will search like this so you may not see enough clicks to statistically generate a sale. This can lead to waiting a long time to make decisions and seeing any performance.

Example 2: Going fully broad and automation first

This is where you using broad match and Smart Bidding from the start of the campaign

Pros: You will get data quickly and can make optimisations to correct traffic quality and conversion rate faster. If you know your website converts well, this can lead to scaling much faster and will potentially see a return much quicker than other approaches.

Cons: You risk spending a lot here very quickly and not generating any results. If conversions aren’t recorded against your campaign, you won't know if it’s due to the keyword targeting or your website proposition which makes troubleshooting very difficult as there are too many variables in play. 

Example 3: Nuanced sectors and industries

Sometimes even a semantic difference between queries can lead to a totally different type of intent in the customer.

I.e ‘builders insurance’ vs ‘buildings insurance’. Once is for tradesmen looking for public liability cover, the other whilst incredibly similar, is homeowners looking for personal cover.

How to approach: In these instances, you may find that even with ample conversion volume, you can never move to broader keywords as the overlap with something irrelevant is just too high.

You should always start narrow here and then test broadening out. Use the Experiments feature in Google Ads to test broad match on a percentage of your traffic and then review the conversion rate and cost-per-acquisition.

If you have strong performance, consider testing on 30% up to 50% of traffic. If performance isn’t where you’d like it to be, 50% would be ideal for a true A/B test.

Bringing Intent into Focus for Keyword Success

As we’ve seen there are two ways to ensure that your Google Ads keywords have the correct intent.

You can use the specific search term itself to qualify the user intent. This will give you better qualification but will limit the volume of high-intent keywords that you can show across.

You can use broad keywords and use the conversion data in the ad campaign to qualify the user intent. This will give you maximum reach and scalability as it taps into far more than the query itself. Be mindful to make sure that you have enough conversion data coming in before moving to this approach.

If you are going to test going broad, do it via Experiments rather than going gun-ho and crashing your return.