Welcome to a brand new series of Adwords Tips and Tricks updated daily to give you specific advice to help control your Adwords costs and build campaigns which drive success.
Today, I want to look at Adwords Keyword Matching. Working with clients across a wide range of industries, one area which is constantly overlooked is, probably one of the most obvious and time-efficient… Keyword Matching. This is simply the technique of choosing whether you wish for your ads to be shown when the keyword(s);
- match the exact phrase the user searchers for: [exact match]
- matches the exact term the user searchers for: “phrase match”
- matches the words included within the search term: broad match
Broad Match
New Adwords keywords default to broad match. What does this mean to you? If you bid against the term red roses your ad (assuming your CPC is optimised) will be seen by people searching for roses are red poem or red hot chili peppers rose bowl tickets – basically, unless monitored carefully your ad will show against highly irrelevant search terms. ‘So what, they won’t click if it’s irrelevant‘ may be your initial response. CTR (Click Thru Rate) – i.e. the percentage of times an ad is viewed and clicked up is a high determinate of your Ad Quality Score. A lower CTR… a higher cost per click and you end up wasting a vast proportion of your Adwords budget on poor performing Ad Campaigns.
Phrase Match
Matching your keywords by Phrase allows you to ensure that the words making up the phrase are positioned correctly. Here’s an example – bidding on the phrase match for “Fabric Design” allows your ad to be shown against searchers for “Fabric Design Ideas” or “Fabric Design Patterns”. It won’t show if somebody searchs for “Fabric Dress Designs” or “Fabric Curtain Designs”. The keywords within the search term MUST make up part of the overall search query in order for that ad to show.
Exact Match
The final keyword matching option available is [Exact Match]. This allows you to stipulate your bid against the exact (do you now see how it got it’s name?!?:)) term typed into Google. If you’re bidding on the exact term [software designer cambridge] your ad will ONLY SHOW if that the exact term typed into Google. As an example, it won’t show if the user typed software design cambridge or software designer cambridgeshire .
The specific nature of Exact Match means that there will be less competitors bidding on that particular term compared with phrase or broad match versions. This, in turn, reduces the maximum CPC and subsequently the Ad Impressions due to the ‘exact match’ criteria.
Tomorrow we’ll look at how you can tie in your Keyword Matching with ‘Negative Keywords’ to ensure you leave no stone unturned in your quest to produce the most relevant and cost-effective Adwords Campaign.
