 |
This just in! You’ve happened upon day 4 of our week-long series on keyword research! Alright, on to the important stuff now. This post is almost a retrospective on a slew of PPC mistakes I’ve made as an advertiser and a bright red flag in the face for broad match neophytes. Let me ask you a question: Do you only use broad match? If so, chances are you’re bleeding money through irrelevant searches that drive low-quality traffic to your site. That being said, I don’t subscribe to the broad-match-is-evil line of thinking. On the contrary, I think that if you apply some finesse to your broad matching strategy with exact, phrase and negative keywords, you can truly jump start your ROI!
Applying an intelligent broad matching strategy to your keyword research is one of the BEST things you can do for your PPC accounts. But before I get into the details, let’s cover the match type basics so we’re all on the same page.
- Broad Match: Terminology applies to Google and MSN adCenter. In Yahoo! this is called Advanced Match. In all three search engines, this is the default setting. Broad match allows Google, et al, to display your ads for terms that are variations, plurals or related (enter expanded broad match) to the keywords in your account.
- Phrase Match: Terminology applies to Google and MSN adCenter ONLY. This match type will show ads when the keyword phrase from your account is a part of the actual search query (all words, in the same order). For example, your keyword is tennis shoes, and that keyword will show ads for searches like tennis shoes store and big purple tennis shoes.
- Exact Match: Terminology applies to Google and MSN adCenter. In Yahoo! this is called Standard Match. This match type is the obvious one – your keyword will only display ads when searchers enter this keyword exactly into the search engines.
- Negative Match: Terminology applies to Google and MSN adCenter. In Yahoo! this is called Excluded Keywords. By applying negative match keywords to your account, you are telling the search engines NOT to display your ad for searches containing that term. This also applies to the Content Network. Applying negative keywords in Content campaigns will restrict your ads from displaying on irrelevant sites.
So, how can you apply this knowledge to your keyword research? Easy. Be conscious of your blossoming keyword list and be proactive with your match type strategy. Here is what you can do while performing your keyword research to be prepared for implementing match types and negative keywords in your PPC account:
- Any product name, brand term or trademarked service you should plan on implementing as an exact match keyword in your account.
- Keywords that you discover have an exceptionally high search volume (relative to other terms in your list) should be given special treatment. Insert these keywords with all three match types. This will maximize your exposure for those terms and once your account is active, a quick way to determine which match type works the best for your ROI, CTR or most important metric.
- While performing your keyword research (especially via tools), be on the lookout for results that are not relevant to your website, product, etc. Begin to place these terms into a negative keyword list.
- Review and implement a generic negative keyword list. You can download my generic list here: PPC Hero Generic Negative Keyword List. Or you can review others like this negative keyword list. I said to “review” these lists. Why? Because they’re generic and may contain keywords that ARE relevant to your website, product, etc. Remove any relevant keywords from these lists before you add them to your account.
- Use the AdWords Keyword Tool to get an idea of what kinds of searches Google will deem as relevant to your broad match keywords. Insert your broad matched keyword and review the results. Record any keywords that are not relevant and add them to your negative keyword list.
In my fledgling attempts at keyword research and PPC account creation, these basic steps would’ve been a God-send. Putting in this effort before your account is live will save you time and money in the long-run. Once your account is active and you begin to drive traffic from your perfectly researched keywords, you will open up Pandora’s box of match type and negative keyword fun! This is when you will learn the joys of expanded broad match and search query reports. What is expanded broad match? This is where Google will display your ad on search queires that are “highly relevant” to your keywords. Let me give you an example:
- Broad matched keyword: honeymoon packages
- Expanded broad match search queries: honeymoon, honeymoons, ama vacations, Disney honeymoon, Europe honeymoon, resorts, Yosemite packages
No joke! So, based on this brief example, Google is telling me that they consider “resorts” to be related to “honeymoon packages” and will therefore display my ad. And what about Yosemite? Ouch! One of Google’s methods for determining “relevancy” on expanded broad match is to evaluate user response to ads displayed. If a ton of searchers click the ad (regardless of CTR or conversion), Google will continue to display ads for that expanded broad match term. In my example, the single word “honeymoon” was also broad matched. This is way too general and has a horrible CTR and conversion rate.
Some advertisers would look at this outcome and just swear off of broad match altogether. However, you have to realize that search queries qualified as expanded broad match don’t affect your Quality Score. And what I’m not showing you here is the countless other broad matched search queries that WERE relevant. So, how can you combat expanded broad matching? A tedious and meticulously created negative keyword list! Give your new account time to drive a substantial amount of traffic (enough to draw conclusions from the data). This could be a week or a month, depending on how much traffic your account generates. At that time, run a search query report. Here’s a short list of the fun, exciting things you can do with that gold mine of data:
- Review the report for search queries that are working the best for your desired metric (clicks, CTR, conversion rate, etc). Add these search queries as exact and phrase matched keywords into your account. Capitalize on those searches.
- Review the report for search queries that are not relevant and add them to your negative keyword list. In the example above I had to be very careful. If I were to simply dump “honeymoon” in my negative keyword list, it would kill nearly ALL of the searches in that ad group. In this instance, I used Negative Exact-Match and Negative Phrase-Match keywords to tip-toe around the keywords that I wanted to keep.
You need to realize that broad match and expanded broad match parameters are constantly changing. Accordingly, you need to make updating your negative keyword list and adding exact/phrase matched keywords a part of your weekly or monthly PPC management routine. Implementing negatives and match types other than broad will seriously jump start your ROI! This was a lot of information, so you if you have any questions, please drop me a comment.
