As a business in the 21st century, you’re online. Along with your work establishing an organic presence, a successful brand should also be investing in digital advertising. This includes search engine ads, which provide you with a handful of settings to play with. Among these are the match types — broad, broad modified, phrase and exact. All are great, but a common mistake is over-relying on phrase match.
If you suspect you might do this — or just need to begin working on your search ads at all — we’ve got some tips that’ll help your search marketing out.
Broad Match
Broad match is the catch all of a PPC account. Google will look for intent when you have broad match keywords in an account. It also is a great way for us to add exact match keywords to an account. (At a much cheaper cost.)
For example, if your ad keyword is “cheap flights to NYC,” it could also show up by searches for “flights to NYC” or “cheap flights to New York.” In the first example search, we see how incomplete searches of your keyword trigger your ad (“cheap flights” versus just “flights). The second is an example of a variation (“New York” versus “NYC”) that will trigger it still.
Example Of Broad Match From User Interface
Broad Match Modified
Broad match modified is like broad match but with the ability to get stricter wherever you specify. Here, words you mark with modifiers must be included in searches in order for your ads to be triggered.
As an example, say your broad match modified keyword is “+seattle +taco +trucks.” In this instance, a search for “seattle taco trucks near me” would trigger your ad, since all designated aspects of the keyword are included there. However, something like “seattle taco bars near me” would not, since it doesn’t include the specified “+trucks.”
Example Of Broad Match Modified From User Interface
Phrase Match
Phrase match keywords will be triggered by both your exact keywords and close variations thereof. This includes plural or single variations, common acronyms, misspellings, etc. For example, if your keyword is “seattle handbags,” it could be triggered both by searches for “seattle handbags” or similar ones like “seattle hand bag” or others.
Example Of Phrase Match From User Interface
Why Approach Phrase Match with Caution?
*** This is the opinion of the author. There are so many ways to optimize a PPC account effectively. Ever heard that old joke about putting 15 PPCers in a room and getting a different answer on how to optimize most effectively… and away we go.
On one hand, phrase match is an easy way to attract many relevant search queries without having to wade through the many less-related results that often plague broad match type. Google Ads reps put a lot of emphasis on phrase match, leading many to assume it has to be the “best” choice. The reality, however, is that it’s not so simple.
That’s not to say phrase match isn’t a great setting for you to utilize — just that it’s wise to not put all your eggs in its basket. A huge reason for that? Phrase match is frequently the most expensive and least efficient match type of your four options.
Other match types are your friends and can make your Google advertising efforts much more efficient where your budget’s concerned.
Exact Match
Unlike phrase match, exact match isn’t so lenient.
Exact match is both the most straightforward match type and the most specific. In this setting, only searches that use the exact text you specify for your keywords will trigger your ad. This means your “seattle handbags” keyword will only be triggered by those words exactly — whereas in phrase match a slight variation like “seattle hand bag” would trigger your ad, now it will not.
Example Of Exact Match From User Interface
How To Figure Out Your Best Match Type Strategies
During a search ads campaign, you’ll notice over time that certain search terms consistently show up — with some hopefully prompting conversions. These consistent high performers are good candidates for the exact match setting, since people are already searching exactly for them.
After establishing these terms as exact match, there is another trick called “keyword mining” that makes your search ad budget go even further. To do this, you will add these same exact match keywords as negative keywords to your ad groups containing phrase, broad, and broad modified keywords most relevant to those exact match keywords. This ensures traffic is directed towards the more efficient — and cheaper — exact match keywords instead of being spread across lower hit-rate searches.
Whether you use phrase, broad, or broad modified to keyword mine depends on what you’re advertising. If what you’re advertising is more niche, you’ll benefit from broad match since the vocabularies associated with your product or service are equally niche and, subsequently, aren’t being searched for directly as much. A product with more common verbiage, however, will best be served by phrase match in order to avoid less relevant traffic that’s unlikely to be interested. The most basic way to think about this process is to first use phrase, broad, or broad modified to hunt — or mine, if you will — for reliable search queries that convert, then have exact match keywords swoop in and take over. Instead of relying on phrase match to drive your conversions, exact match’s precision makes it a cheaper and more efficient strategy to close with.
