One of the most basic things to know when starting and running a successful Adwords campaign is knowing your match types. So many times has the question been asked ‘What are the basics I should know when starting an Adwords campaign?’ and the first thing anyone new to Adwords should look into is, what are keyword match types and how are they used?
One of the biggest problems with new Adwords advertisers is spending budget and not knowing where its being spent. It’s possible that out of thousands of keywords in a campaign, one has the wrong match type and is eating through your budget off a none relevant keyword.
So, this article has been put together to clear this matter up. Below you will find the different match types available and the purpose of each.
Broad Match Type
When a keyword is set to broad match it will show up for other terms which are relevant to the root keyword.
For example:
If you are running the keyword ‘Car Insurance’ and its set to broad match it could also show up for other terms such as ‘Life Insurance’, ‘Home Insurance’, ‘Travel Insurance’ and could even go as far as showing up for ‘Car Parts’, depending on what Google thinks is relevant to the root keyword.
If the service you provide is just ‘Car Insurance’ you could find a large amount of your budget is being used by none relevant keywords driving none relevant traffic to your website.
Broad Match Modifier Type
This type of match is not listed in the match types but does exist. This match type can be used by adding a plus(+) before the word.
For example:
+Car +Insurance
This match type is in-between Board and Phrase, and the way it works is similar to broad but with a difference!
Google will still show keywords which it thinks is relevant to the root keyword but this time it must contain the words which have a + connected.
So examples of this would be, ‘Car Insurance’, ‘Insurance For Car(s)’, ‘Cheap Car Insurance’ and ‘Insurance For Classic Car(s)’.
Phrase Match Type
This type of match will show other keywords but with terms that can be added to the front or the end of the root keyword.
For Example:
“Car Insurance”
Will also show for ‘Car Insurance’, ‘Cheap Car Insurance’, ‘Car Insurance in the UK’, ‘Cheap Car Insurance in the UK’ and so on.
Notice that the root keyword is always in the phrase match generated keywords but with other words added to the front or end.
Exact Match type
Lastly this type of match is the easiest to understand how it works. When a keyword is set to ‘Exact Match’ it will not show for any other term then the root keyword.
For Example:
[Car Insurance]
This will only show up for the exact term ‘Car Insurance’ and usually used when the keyword has proven itself to be a good converting keyword.
TIP: To find keywords which are being generated off a match type, look at the search query report found within the Adgroup.
This will allow you to find keywords which are not relevant to your Ads landing page and negative them out of the Adgroup.
This article has been produced by iDream Design, specialists in Web Design Essex.