So you have these keyword match types that you know can somehow help you optimize
your campaign strategy – but how do you know which ones to use and when?
There are multiple strategies for setting match types, and there is no one correct solution.
We’ll discuss some general practices, but keep in mind that you’ll have to check out your own performance metrics to determine what’s working for your campaign and what isn’t.
The value of setting keywords to exact match is that you can target a very specific search
audience.
However, if you’re only bidding on exact match keywords, you’ve very narrowly defined your target, which sharply limits your reach, so chances are you’re not going to get a lot of traffic.
This is because there’s no way to know exactly what terms people are going to search for, and if you try to guess at a list of exact keywords, even if it’s a long list, you’ll likely be missing out on tons of potential leads and customers that are using different search terms.
To avoid this issue, a popular strategy is to start with all keywords set to broad match,
which opens up the floodgates to all related traffic.
Now, a high volume of traffic may be a good thing, but you have to make sure that it is qualified traffic.
In other words, say, for example, someone searches for “Velcro” and your ad for “red men’s tennis shoes with Velcro” appears.
The viewer may click on your ad, but because the search term that sent him to it was so general and vague, the likelihood that he will convert to a lead on your offer is significantly lower.
This is because the odds that he was actually looking for red men’s tennis shoes with Velcro is much lower than it would be for someone who searched for that term, or something closer to that term.
Yet many people are easily misled by the quantity of the traffic they drive with broad match
keywords, and they don’t look at the reporting to evaluate quality.
Oftentimes, they’re ranking on irrelevant keywords and driving unqualified traffic from them, which just wastes their money.
This is why it’s extremely important, if you set your keywords to broad match, to closely monitor what search queries are coming through. Don’t forget, you can use negative match to add negative keywords when necessary.
A good keyword strategy is to use broad match and phrase match to drive traffic, then use
the Search Terms report to find the keywords that convert well and make sense for your
business, and set those to exact match, because they’ve been proven to work.
The best thing to do to figure out your match type strategy is to just keep testing. Use your
performance metrics to optimize your keywords, which could include adding and deleting
keywords or changing their match types.
It’s an ongoing process. Keyword performance will change over time, and your campaign strategy should change with it.
