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 great at first sight, a broad match setting can result in low quality hits and poor conversion rates. A person searching for travel journal stories 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 bad option. If your product makes a popular Christmas gift, you definitely 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.

Google Adsense and Adwords bear on this custom. You neither “add sense” nor “ad words” when you use these two Google services. Instead, the best way to think of them is to consider a middle man in any transaction. In this case, Google is the middle man and profitably so.

Google Adwords is a program you are able to use to get listed in the search results for Google and other search engines, such as AOL, for which it supplies ads. You essentially create an account, insert your advertisement, pick the maximum number you’re willing to PPC on your ad and then submit your credit card. You advertisement will then go live once the credit card is approved. Every time someone clicks on your ad, Google bills your account. Every couple of weeks or when your bill reaches a certain amount, Google will actually charge your credit card. Adwords is known as a form of pay-per-click advertising.

Google Adsense is basically the other side of the coin. There are non-search engine sites on the web that get a lot of traffic and Google trusts. This site is one, but it’s hardly an exclusive club. With Google Adsense, these sites are able to set up accounts with Google and list advertisements from Google Adwords on the sites.

A good example of this are the advertizements in the right hand column of this page. We’re listing these ads through the Google Adsense program. Each advertisement is actually a Google Adword listing. When someone clicks on one of the ads on our site, we get a percentage of the bid price Google is charging that advertiser. What is the percentage amount? Nobody knows because Google won’t reveal the information! Still, it is enough that it pays some of the overhead of hosting and such. Some people build sites solely to promote Adsense ads. It just depends on your particular level of interest.

What is the difference between Adsense and Adwords? You pay Google for to place Adwords on Google’s system, but Google pays you to put Adsense on your site.

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 little 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 great, 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 biggest 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, create 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 asked 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, however, 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 definitely have a place in the online marketing field. Manage your campaigns with an eye for detail and you should fine.