With Google Adwords being the most popular pay per click provider, many small businesses are dipping their toes in to try it out. However, it’s a complex system to learn so over the next few months, I’ll be giving you some tips to help you manage your campaigns that bit better.
One of the first things to learn is keyword settings. Adwords has four settings you can use for your keywords or key phrases: broad match, phrase match, exact match & negative. The default setting is broad match.
What these settings mean is that your keywords can trigger your ads for different keyword combinations depending on which settings you use, which are as follows:
Broad match: Keywords on this setting will mean your ads will show for the keywords you input into your list plus variations of the keyword, synonyms and a range of combinations of your key phrases. For example, a physiotherapist sponsoring the keyword ‘neck pain’ in a broad search could find the ads triggered for keywords such as ‘neck pain and dizziness’, ‘neck pain in pregnancy’ and ‘neck shoulder arm pain’. You may even find your ads triggered for keywords such as ‘neck brace’ so when leaving keywords on a broad match setting, you need to ensure that the keywords don’t trigger your ads for untargeted searches.
Phrase match: This setting is more targeted than broad match and means your ads will be triggered for your keywords exactly with perhaps a word or two before or after your keyword. Using the above example, ‘neck pain’, this keyword on a phrase match could trigger your ads for ‘neck pain in pregnancy’ but not ‘neck shoulder arm pain’. Your keywords will be listed in quotation marks e.g “neck pain”
Exact match: Your keywords will only be shown exactly as you input them into your campaign, so for example, ‘neck pain’ will only trigger your ads for ‘neck pain’ and no other keywords at all. Your keywords will be listed in square brackets, e.g [neck pain].
Many of my campaign keywords usually end up as phrase or exact matches, but there’s no harm in experimenting with broad match, as long as the keywords that trigger your ads are relevant to your offering.
Negative: these are keywords that you don’t want to trigger your ads at all. Using the ‘neck pain’ example, a physiotherapist may not want ads triggered for ‘neck brace’, so ‘brace’ would be included in the negative keyword list.
For more on keyword settings, you can read up on the Google Adwords website.
