About keyword themes in Smart campaigns

Google Ads Smart campaigns | Keyword themes

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Keyword themes are words or phrases that help match your ads with Google searches. Selecting the right keyword themes helps you reach people when they’re looking for the products and services that you offer. This article explains how keyword themes work and provides tips for choosing the right keyword themes for your Smart campaigns.

How it works

A single keyword theme represents multiple similar words and phrases. For instance, the keyword theme 'bakery' makes your ad eligible to show when people search for 'bakery near me', 'local bakery' and 'cake shop'.

After your ad is active, you can review your campaign’s search terms and turn off any that aren’t relevant for your business. You’re in control of when your ads show.

Note: If you’re familiar with keywords in other types of Google Ads campaigns, keyword themes are similar to keywords. However, in Smart campaigns, a single keyword theme can represent multiple keywords. Save time by not entering an exhaustive list of keywords, and still get high-performing ads that show on appropriate Google searches.

Add high-value keyword themes to your Smart campaigns

Here are a few best practices for adding keyword themes to your campaign:

Aim for a maximum of 7–10 keyword themes

Because we show your ad for multiple similar words and phrases, give us a few keyword themes, and we’ll do the rest. Adding too many keyword themes might mean your ad shows for less relevant searches.

When providing keyword themes, make sure:

They don't contain punctuation marks.
They don't contain URLs.
They don't contain a phone number.
They don't exceed 20 characters (10 characters for Japanese and Chinese).

Think like your customers

What are customers likely to be searching for when looking for the products and services that you offer? If there are certain words or phrases that your customers use, consider including them as keyword themes.

Remember your advertising strategy

Are you advertising your overall business, or a specific product or service? Say you serve hot beverages at your bakery, but prefer to advertise cakes and other baked specialities that you offer. Make sure that you limit your keyword themes to precisely what you’re advertising – in this case, cakes and related items, and not beverages.

It’s also a good idea to echo these words in your ad text, and make sure that your ad links to the most relevant page of your website.

Create separate campaigns for different groups of keyword themes

If your business sells different types of products or services, you can always run multiple campaigns, each targeting their own set of keyword themes. You can even allocate more of your advertising budget to one of your campaigns if you want to highlight that aspect of your business.

To change your keyword themes:

Click the name of the Smart campaign that you’d like to edit.
Go to the 'Keyword themes & search terms report' card.
Click on Edit.
Click Edit in the keyword theme tab.
Edit your keyword themes.
Click Save.

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