Adwords Keyword Strategies

In this chapter we'll cover two essential keyword strategies - tools that you absolutely must be using if you want your AdWords campaigns to be successful. Without wasting time, let's dive right into it.

Keyword Matching

Keyword matching refers to the basic AdWords functionality of matching your target keywords to the search queries that users are typing into the search engine every day. If you are targeting that searcher's geographical location (that means that if the searcher is in Jamaica and you are restricting your target market to US, he won't see your ad) and if there is a keyword match, then your ad will be shown for that search (what ad will show, where it will show, what ranking it will have will depend on your settings).

There are four types of keyword matching that AdWords uses - broad match, phrase match, exact match and negative match. We've seen the first three before, but let's review them once again.

Broad match

This is the default option. When you include keyword phrases such as tennis shoes in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order and possibly along with other terms.

Broad matches are often less targeted than exact or phrase matches.

You should be careful with broad matches - they bring in a lot of traffic but it's mostly untargeted traffic. With broad matching you must use negative keywords (see negative matching below) to cut off unwanted searches. For example, if you are bidding on website templates you wouldn't want people who are searching for free website templates to come a cross your ad - even if they click through they are looking for free stuff and thus most definitely will not pay, costing you money for nothing.

Example:

Phrase match

Your ad appears when users search on the exact phrase and also when their search contains additional terms, as long as the keyword phrase is in exactly the same order. A phrase match for "tennis shoes" would include "red tennis shoes" but not "shoes for tennis."

Phrase matches are useful when you want to target exact word combinations, such as "bose speakers" or "california DUI lawyer".

Example:

Exact match

The search query must exactly match your keyword. This means "tennis shoes" will only match a user request for "tennis shoes" and not for "red tennis shoes," even though the second query contains your keyword. Exact matches are the most specific type of keyword matching - your ad shows only if your keywords exactly match the search.

This cuts down on the number of potential searches you can target, so it's always a good idea to use phrase matching and some broad matching as well.

Example:

Negative match

When you don't want your ad to show for certain keywords, you can put that keyword here. One of the most common negative matches is 'free'. In your keyword research you may also come across a lot of terms that you don't want to target. By entering them as negative matches, you will be able to cut down on wasteful clicks.

Be careful of what you put in as negative keywords though - you might end up cutting off some very valuable keyword searches.

Broad match: keyword as it is
Phrase match: "keyword in quotes"
Exact match: [keyword in brackets]
Negative match: -keyword with trailing minus sign

For more help on keyword matching, watch this Flash tutorial the AdWords help site on keyword matching.

Example:
moving on...