How does this work?
Smart Groups are a feature that allows you to automatically organize your keyword list based on any combination of metrics or filters, using AND or OR logical operators.
As opposed to regular groups, which are just collections of manually-selected keywords, the Smart Groups are dynamic in nature, updating daily, with any keywords that correspond to the chosen criteria. This also means that Smart Groups are not mutually exclusive – you can have a keyword in multiple groups, be it regular or Smart.
Any filter you apply to the list can be saved as a Smart Group:
When you initially set up a campaign, you are also presented with the option to have any or all of the predefined sets of Groups and Smart Groups (see below):
You can get access to these predefined smart groups at any time, even after creating your campaign, by selecting the option "New Smart Group":
Further, from the sidebar, select a filter category to start with, and then click on the link at the bottom to choose from our predefined smart groups.
Predefined Smart Groups for your more generic needs
Keywords with Issues
Brand of others
These are navigational keywords that represent other brand names, where most of the clicks would go to that brand's website. Their SERPs usually have the expanded 1st position, with full site-links. You should be wary of tracking these keywords, as they would distort your reports: they have (usually high) search volumes you can't actually access, or be visible on; and even if visible, you would get no traffic from them, all of the clicks would go to their domain.
Cannibalization
These are keywords that had more than 2 Landing Page switches (in the SERP) over the last 30 days. You can check the pages that switch in each keyword’s sidebar or directly on the rank change explainer – and from there go further: see which page ranks better, choose the best one, and fix the problem.
Localized
Keywords with highly-customized SERPs depending on the location, like “restaurants near me”. The presented SERP and its corresponding ranks would not be representative of the other locations, so be wary of how the search volumes would also be split between the different locations.
Low relevance
Low-relevance keywords are the ones where the user's intention would not be met by the website’s content. Your website isn’t ranking, the main competitors you’ve selected aren’t ranking either, so it seems like a targeting mismatch. Of course, this is just a heads-up, and you can keep tracking these keywords if you know they will have relevant pages and content in the future.
Missing relevant pages
Keywords that you track that do not have relevant pages on your website. We do a secondary search only on your website, to detect cases where a relevant landing page does not exist for one or more of the keywords you're tracking. This can be a cue for you to create relevant content on your website for those tracked keywords.
Note: You can download a report for all the categories of keywords with issues: first click on the quick filter located on the top-right of the keyword table, and then click on the Download icon against the category.
Keyword Opportunities
High opportunity
These have the highest Opportunity score – meaning a combination of the lowest Difficulty to reach the top positions and the highest potential traffic once there.
High search volumes
Based on your keyword portfolio, these are the ones with high search volumes. Ranking higher on them would have the biggest impact on your overall site visibility.
Low difficulty
This website could relatively easily rank in top 10 on these, based on our Difficulty algorithm.
Performing Keywords
Top 10/100/11-20
These are currently ranking in top 10/100/11-20, on either device. The list of keywords within these groups is always for the last available rank (today’s rank). These are a way of spotting "low-hanging fruit", or can be used for the keyword count – how many in Top 10, for example.
Note: The automatic smart groups always consist of keywords that currently satisfy the smart group conditions, not historically, and not according to a selected timeframe. For instance, selecting the Top 10 group and applying the timeframe of Nov-Dec last year will tell you what the rank of the keywords that currently rank in Top 10 were, on the last day of Dec. However, if you want to know which keywords ranked in Top 10 last Nov-Dec, use the Last Rank filter on the All Keywords group. Here's how you can use all the filters.
Highly Seasonal Keywords
In full season / Out of season / Season approaching
Notable highly-seasonal keywords, that are in/out of/approaching their peak season.
Keywords with Shifting Search Trends
Exploding/Tanking Keywords
Looking at their search volumes year-over-year, these are keywords that more than doubled or decreased by more than half in searches. These are valuable as some are less predictable than others. Identifying a now-high search volume can give you a competitive advantage, that would otherwise not be given by the yearly average.
Usage Optimization
Low search volume
These have fewer than 50 searches per month, and would get fewer than 10 clicks even when ranking first.
Misspellings
These are keywords for which Google provides a SERP for a different variation, usually signalled with a “Did you mean” at the top of the page. You would not want to keep tracking them: their search volumes are misleading (as they usually represent the search volume from the main close variant keyword) and you would probably not optimize the page for them.
FAQs
Why can’t I add keywords in Smart Groups?
Keywords are automatically “attached” to Smart Groups whenever they correspond to the saved filters. You cannot manually remove or add keywords, but you can add all keywords in a smart group into a regular one and then edit that keyword list as you need.
Are smart groups affected if I switch the device in the rank tracker?
They are not, they will show the list of keywords corresponding to the device-relative filter that you initially set up in the smart group.
Why don't some of the groups change once I change the time frame?
It depends on whether the group is filtered by an attribute that is influenced by the selected timeframe or not.