A Keyword Segmentation How-To: WordStream's Keyword Grouping Suggestion Tools

You can also check out our keyword grouping video tutorial.

Keyword group segmentation with WordStream is a very simple process that offers significant returns.

This tutorial will show you how to utilize the application's workflow prioritization tools and intelligent keyword grouping features to create high-performance search engine marketing segmentations.

NOTE: This tutorial deals with keyword segmentation. To learn more about hand-crafting your own Keyword Groups, please see the Create Keyword Groups Tutorial. Additionally, if you'd like a more high-level demonstration of how to segment keywords using WordStream, please see the four minute quick start guide.

Getting Started with Keyword Segmentation

Once you've gotten set up and have imported all of the keywords you'll need to get started with your WordStream account, you can start to segment the keywords you've uploaded.

Initially, you'll have all of your keywords dropped into one bucket, called the "all keywords" bucket. From there you'll simply click "segment keywords" to create numerous new keyword groups quickly:

Next, you'll be shown a keyword segmentation dialog. Since we run a used bookstore, our suggestions are centered around used books:

What's happening here is that WordStream is scanning your list of keywords and presenting you with keyword segmentation suggestions, based on various factors.

It's important to note that the keyword looks for keyword "clusters" and then groups together key phrases that contain one of those words.

So, WordStream may determine that book and books are sufficiently similar to group together. Every key phrase containing these keywords will then be included in the group, for instance:

• used books
• used book store
• cheap book for a present
• rare books

It's also important to understand how these keyword suggestions are being made. WordStream is scanning your account's keywords and looking for three things:

• Keywords (%k) - This number represents the percentage of the keywords represented by the Keyword Group you are about to create. In other words: this metric tells you how big, in terms of keyword variations, a keyword group would be. This is important because groups that are too big are difficult to write targeted ad text to, and so the tool recommends you chop up over-sized Keyword Groups.
• Visits (%v) - This number is the percentage of visits that are driven by the Keyword Group you are about to create. This is important because keyword groups that drive a lot of traffic to your site are important, and deserve your attention.
• A Combination of the Two (!) - This metric takes into account both the size and importance of a keyword segmentation by allowing you to combine the two numbers.

The default view for the keyword segmenter is the third option, but if you would like to sort segmentations by percent of visits or percent of keywords, simply click the top of the column you'd like to sort by:

You now have a choice as to how to proceed. You can either:

• Create this Group, or
• Expand the Segmentation

We recommend expanding the segmentation, for reasons we'll describe in just a second, but if at any time you'd like to create a keyword group it's as simple as clicking the "create group" button:

Expanding a Keyword Segmentation

So I agree that "used" is a relevant word for my business. But really this is insufficient as a Keyword Group. As a used bookstore, I might have thousands of different variations of "used". I definitely want to target "used copy of Crime and Punishment" differently than I would the query "used books". The two show very different types of intent!

WordStream makes it easy to go beyond this initial segmentation quickly. Simply click "expand segmentation":

NOTE: When you expand a segmentation, you are not creating that group; you're simply previewing additional segmentations. More on this shortly.

Here you see that the software has not just created the "used" segmentation. It's actually shown us the sub-segmentations of used that we could potentially create.

From there, we can create as many of these segmentations as we'd like at once, either by right-clicking and selecting the "Create Group(s)" option, or by clicking the "Create Group" button, as pictured above.

Finally, you'll be presented with a dialog which allows you to verify the groups you'd like created, and to append a prefix to each group:

Note that the group name prefix will be applied to every group within this dialog:

A useful tip is that if you want WordStream to include a space in your group names, be sure to include that space in the prefix, as pictured above.

Going Beyond Keyword Segmentations

Once you've created a Keyword Group with WordStream, you can then turn that group into an Ad Group.

In addition to the creation of keyword segmentations, you'll want to learn how to make use of the WordStream maintenance tools:

• Negative Keyword Suggestion Tool
• PPC & SEO Workflow Tool

Or check out one of the other User Manual Tutorials if there's something else about the product you'd like more information on.