Matching Options

When running an Adwords campaign, you are able to and should define when your keywords will come out in search results. To do this, you can select matching options for each of your keywords to either reach a broad audience or target a niche.

The Google Adwords program allows you to select four matching options:

Broad Match

Broad match is the default adjusting for an Adwords campaign. Broad match means your ad will come out in search results when any compounding of the words in your keyword phrase are used in a search. Many an adman has learned expensive lessons using this setting. Let’s look at an example.

Assume I am selling travel writing diaries and using “travel journals” as my keyword phrase. Any time a person enters any combination of “travel” and “journals” in a search, my ad will appear. The ad will also appear for plurals and relevant variations. While this may sound fantastic at first sight, a broad match setting can result in low quality hits and poor conversion rates. A person searching for travel journal tales is going to see my link. While a decent percentage will click my link, they are far less likely to buy because they are just browsing. Using broad match, my costs go up and my conversions go down.

Broad match Is not necessarily a terrible option. If your product makes a well loved Christmas gift, you certainly want to use the broad match option in November and December. You prospective clients will be motivated to buy. Even the “browsing” surfers will convert well.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is a matching option that gives you a bit more control over your ads. Phrase match tells the Adwords platform to only show your ad when a search is conducted for the particular order of your keyword phrase. Using the phrase match option for “travel journals”, my ad would appear when someone searches for a phrase with “travel journals” in it, but not “journals travel”. To use phrase match, you simply place quotation marks around the keyword phrase.

Exact Match

Exact match is…exact match. It is the most targeted option. You should use it only if you want your ad to appear in searches for the exact keyword phrase as written. For instance, if I want my ad to appear in searches for “travel journals” and nothing else, I will use exact match. To select the exact match option, simply place brackets (“[]”) around the keyword phrase.

Negative Match

No, the negative match option doesn’t involve cussing, insults or adult sites. Instead, it allows you to designate which keyword phrase search results you do not want to appear in. For example, I may not want my travel journal product to appear in search results for “Amazon travel journals”. I would simply list the keyword phrase with a dash (-) in front of it and my ad will not appear. The negative match option is a tremendous way to eliminate junk traffic from your Adwords campaign.

The Google Adwords platform is a tremendous advertising platform. Effectively manipulate your keywords and it can be a highly profitable one as well.

What Is A pay-per-click?

A PPC SE allows you to bid for locating in search results. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and most others bolster their organic search results with sponsor ads. If you search on Google, links in blue across the top and the small ads down the right side of the search results are PPC listings. In one form or another, similar listings appear on every major search engine.

How Does It Work?

When you use a PPC, you’ll bid for placement in the search results under specific keywords. Rather than optimizing your site to appear high in the listings, you simple pay for the position. While this may sound fantastic, keep in mind you’re paying for the listing and have to watch the return on investment closely.

To get started, you must open an account with the PPC in question. The two largest PPCs are Google Adwords and Overture. You’ll need to register with the PPC, provide a credit card number and, depending on the PPC, deposit money into the account. Next, make ads with a title, body text and link to the landing page of your site. The title of each ad should correspond to a particular keyword you want to promote. If at all possible, include the keyword in the actual title. Finally, you will be questioned to bid on placement in the search results.

Bidding for placement isn’t as simple as it my sound. Ideally, your ad should be in the top 3, but never below the 10th position. This has to be balanced, but, by the return on investment of the campaign. If you sell a product that produces a ten dollar profit per sale, you likely can’t afford to pay $.90 per click. If your site converts 1 visitor out of every 100 into a sale, you will spend $90 for every sale. Obviously, that is going to work out very well. The one caveat to this situation is a business with reoccurring revenue.

If you site charges clients a reoccurring monthly fee, you can bid in excess of your immediate profit margin. To do this safely, you must determine how long the average customer will stay on your site. For example, if you make a $10 profit per month and the average customer pays for 5 months, the total profit is $50. In this situation, you can spend $20 or $30 to obtain a customer and still turn a profit. To properly manage a PPC campaign for a reoccurring charge site, you must recalculate the profit per customer ever week to protect yourself.

PPC Cons

Why not just use a PPC campaign instead of pursuing search engine optimization? There are a number of reasons. First, you are paying for each click with a PPC, which requires a budget and may impact your cash flow. Second, PPC bidding is competitive and that translates into higher costs, so much so that a profit may be hard to make. Third, many people simply do not click on PPC ads with the figure being as high as 20 percent. Fourth, you run the risk of having people click on your ads with no intention of buying, whether they are just browsing or are trying to exhaust your advertising budget.

PPCs certainly have a place in the online marketing field. Manage your campaigns with an eye for detail and you should fine.