STAG vs SKAG: Which is Better?

The way in which marketers advertise and manipulate the Google SERPs has evolved over the years. Optimising everything from PPC spend, to keyword targeting and bidding strategy. Google Ads has evolved from the days of Google Adwords, Google Ads Editor, and to the latest (and personal thoughts on this) terrible update to the user interface in the browser version of Google Ads.

One of the latest conversations within Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has been which is better, Single Themed Ad Groups or Single Keyword Ad Groups?

In this blog, I’ll answer this question as best as possible.

STAG (no not the animal), stands for Single Themed Ad Group/s. This approach to Google Search campaigns is to compile your campaign ad groups based upon certain keyword themes. An example of this would be the following screenshot below:

As with any PPC strategy, there are multiple advantages that STAGs grant marketers. As Google continue to “optimise” (I’ll let you cast your own opinion on this) their search engine and products, marketers must adapt and further optimise strategies in order to improve performance. So, here are the following benefits of opting for a Single Theme Ad Groups (STAGs) strategy.

For accounts that may be shared between multiple marketers, a STAG PPC strategy can be much easier and efficient in order to maintain and manage. Instead of running campaigns that have a couple hundred (or even a couple thousand) keywords all split into their own specific close segments you can narrow down the complexity and management of a large campaign very quickly.

This means that if a specific set of keywords are not performing well (eating budget without returning conversions, or lacking in click performance), that this can be identified much quicker, fixes can implemented much faster and you can run the campaign as a whole much more efficiently.

The importance of building ads cannot be understated. I mean the ads are the first impression a user gets before anything else. Not to mention how Google will determine the quality score for your keywords based off the ad copy you use within your ads. So needless to say, keeping your ad relevance high to your target keywords is important.

By using a close variety of keywords together within the same ad group, you can build highly relevant ads to these keywords groups without needing to spam each keyword within the headlines.

Building a large Google Search campaign can take a bit of time; now you can use tools that I will mention later on in this blog to help you build, expand and optimise ad groups more efficiently. However, if you decide to stick to the browser version of Google Ads to create your search campaigns, then you can end up spending a lot of time setting up countless ad groups to target each and every key phrase within the campaign.

By using a Single Themed Ad Group strategy, you can more efficiently build the target ad groups, leaving you more time within the month to analyse and make adjustments to improve performance.

As with any Pay Per Click strategy, there will be some downsides to implementing. Although STAGs appear to be a very thorough and safe option to choose (which in the grand schemes of things they are!), there are some negatives that you should be aware of before implementing them into your strategy.

Now, when I say that STAGs offer you less control, I do mean that they offer less control compared to SKAGs. By lumping close variations of keywords in with each other, you do lose the ability to select Ad Group URL Options and the rotation options of your ads. Both of these setting can be used to gather additional information which can be used to inform further optimisation methods.

We at Beach Marketing have seen multiple accounts where nearly all of the click, impression and conversion performance has been maintained by 1 or 2 keywords. Essentially these keywords have consumed the daily and monthly budget before other keywords have had the opportunity to use a portion of the budget to perform themselves.

Now left unchecked, this can create issues within the account, but what it also does is prevent the campaign to perform as optimally as possible. By Choosing a STAG approach to your Google Search Campaigns, you reduce the control you have over individual keywords like this from consuming the budget. For example, if you alter the CPA for this ad group to stop a keyword from overspending, then you can also be affecting the performance of the other keywords within that same ad group.

Now that I have gone through the pro’s and con’s of using a STAG strategy towards your Google Search Campaigns, I think it is worth noting what you should look out for when you do implement this strategy.

I must stress the importance of keep a very tight nit group of keywords together. If you come across a keyword that you need to question whether it would fit within that theme then I would advise you don’t add it in. The keywords that are included in each theme should all follow a very similar path. Take the screenshot from above as an example. I would not include “handheld bluelight scanner” in with either “Handheld Scanner” or “Blue Light Scanners”. Instead, I would create a new theme based upon this keyword. Essentially, I am telling you to be strict about how you segment your ad groups.

SKAG (no stupid joke to mention here), stands for Single Keyword Ad Group, this approach is as simple as it seems. Build an ad group surrounding a single keyword. You can use multiple keyword targeting techniques to find success (who knows, maybe using a broad match type will return conversions without just dumping your budget?), but as long as you are not including different varieties of keywords in within the same ad group then you are using a SKAG.

SKAGs also offer their own benefits for marketers, the reason that this technique has lasted as long as it has is because it works. This has been the go-to technique for PPC specialists for a long time with plenty of case studies out on the internet to prove why this technique is useful.

As mentioned above, SKAGs off you more control over STAGs. This goes beyond just testing URL options and Ad rotation, But also allows for better targeting control as you can implement negative keyword lists across specific ad groups and thanks to SKAGs, to specific keywords too.

The refinement and optimisation that a marketer can do with STAGs is all present with SKAGs, however, the reason that SKAGs offer a more controlled refinement process in comparison to STAGs is because this method allows for refinement on a keyword to keyword basis.

I have already mentioned this previously, but, with more control over individual keywords and ad groups allows for better scope of testing. Maybe for a specific keyword you would like to test a variation of ad copy. With STAGs, this would mean that the ad copy test would apply for all keywords within that ad group. With each keyword being very closely related to each other, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. However, SKAGs offer you the ability to test via keyword, granting you more control of the account.

The disadvantages to SKAGs (like with STAGs) can be very situational. If you run an account that has 100 keywords spready across multiple campaigns, then the disadvantages to SKAGs is very minimum. However, if you operate an account that have a thousand keywords per campaign, then you can clearly see where the issues start to show themselves; regardless I will detail them out to you here.

As a Google Search Campaign gets larger, the so does the complexity and management time get larger too. It may easy to think that just adding another ad group with a different keyword cannot cause any problems, but that is before you even consider how each one of your ad groups are operating with one another. Are some of your ad groups bidding on keywords that are already within your account. This would lead to your Google Search Campaign essentially cannibalising itself. And confusing itself on which keyword should bid when is appropriate.

Situations like this can lead to a more complex account structure and setup.

As I have made clear above, a larger number of ad groups requires more time to manage. This revolves around checking top level performance, to delving into the depths of the search term report and analysing each and every search term your ads appear for. As you can see, this can eat up management time very, very quickly.

When multiple people are working on the same account, it needs to be exactly clear on what work is being done, what tests are currently being ran and what the projection of the project is. Obviously “more leads” tends to be the answer, however, as marketers we understand that leads are built throughout a journey and liaising with your co-workers with how you are adapting and optimising that journey is very important.

With the additional size of a SKAG campaign, translating all this information across can become more difficult then running a small STAG campaign strategy.

When building a Google Search campaign using SKAGs, there are a couple of things that you should consider in order to avoid any potential problems or complications.

By keyword variations, I am talking about understanding that you may not need to build a new ad group for keywords that end with an “s”. An example of this would be “surfboard” (keeping this beach themed of course) and “surfboards”.

Due to Google’s keyword targeting options, both search variation can be triggered by either keyword. This means that you need not to complicate (and most importantly reduce setup and maintenance time) your search campaign. This would also mean that you do not dilute your campaign budget even further and allow for either keyword to perform better.

Maintaining a general theme throughout the campaign can be seen as treating the campaign as a whole like a STAG, however, it would be a STC (Single Theme Campaign). Might just be me but this doesn’t really have a ring to it.

So, maintaining a single theme throughout the campaign is there to help the general maintenance and flow of the campaign. Running all the services that your business provides through a single campaign can quickly create a chaotic and confusing campaign to manage (you would be surprised how often I come across this).

Marketers (like myself), we are always on the hunt for brand new digital tools to help us execute processes, speed up the boring and mundane tasks, and well we are always on the hunt for tools that grant us an advantage over the competition.

Below are just some of the tools that I use on a daily basis that help grow, monitor and optimise Google Search campaigns. These tools have helped provide me with key information that has taken my digital marketing campaigns to the next level.

P.S. I am not going to share all my tools with you. I need to stay ahead somehow.

This tool has been around for quite a while now, and although I do prefer using the browser version of Google Ads (questionable since the latest interface update), this local desktop application can allow any marketer to build and adapt larger campaigns very efficiently.

For building SKAG campaigns you can imagine that the setup, duplication and adaptation process is much faster and easier once you get your head around the system.

This brilliant tool allows for you to complete a (sh*t) ton of keyword research in a small amount of time. Essentially what this tool does is take Google Keyword Planner data and organise it into small clusters.

As you can imagine, not only does this make sifting through hundred and even thousands of keywords much easier and faster, but it also will give you some brilliant themes of keywords that you can include within their own campaign or ad group.

Both STAGs and SKAGs have their place in Google Search. Each both present benefits and negatives that the other can help alleviate, and not to play the fence sitting game, but I do believe that understanding to use a mixture of both strategies will allow for PPC marketers to gain an advantage within the SERPs.

As Google continues to update and change the keyword targeting techniques (please return modified broad match targeting!), STAGs have seen an increase in popularity online. Looking at forums such as reddit and other chat avenues, the consensus is that STAGs are the way to go. However, I think that for particularly high performing keywords there is an argument that siloing them to their own particular ad group can help provide you more overall control of that keyword.

I think there is also an argument to say that SKAGs have been a go-to technique for Pay Per Click marketers for so long, that this technique is not going anywhere any time soon.

For more digital marketing articles written by Matt Gillin, click here.