All About Matching Keywords
Posted on 25 August, 2009 | No Comments
When you choose your keywords, you may not even consider using keywords that are misspelled. However, with so many people these days using the internet, and many of them with less than perfect spelling, having a few deliberate errors in your keywords and metatags, you might even be able to capture a large chunk of the potential client pool that no one else has!
In this article, we look at the value of the different types of matching, and how you can use each of these to better target your campaigns, and boost your conversion rate.
Negative Matching
Even if you are used to the various keyword matching options out there, you may be surprised to learn that you have the option of banning matches. Which means that if there is a specific word or phrase that you DON’T want your ad to appear in, you can set the search parameters accordingly.
Doing this is quite simple – when you set the matching on your ad words account, simply add a minus (-) sign before your chosen terms.
Exact Match
When you set terms to exact match, you get highly targeted traffic, as the name suggests. This means that you only get results from people who enter the exact terms or phrases that you specify. You will of course have a narrower “crop” of results from this type of matching, but the people that do end up on your site will almost certainly have a genuine interest in what you are selling.
Broad Match
The default setting on ad words accounts, broad matching is a good way to get a lot of results. For instance, if you are selling travel guides, and you set the terms of your search to include that phrase, your ad will be displayed any time anyone uses either of the terms you’ve specified.
Of course, at first glance, this seems like a good idea – lots of traffic, in theory, means lots of sales. However, while you will get a high volume of hit, they will not be targeted hits, and you may find that while you get a lot of traffic this way, your conversion rate remains quite low.
Phrase Match
Kind of a happy medium between broad and exact matching, phrase matching tells Google to show search results according to an exact, pre specified phrase. Which would mean, for instance, that if your chosen phrase is “dating for over fifties” for instance, only searches that contain that phrase will deliver results.
Spending a little time testing your matching, as well as your keywords, will go a long way to improving the quality of results and traffic you get, and that, of course, will directly affect your conversion rate, and your bottom line. Trial and error is, unfortunately, a part of life where pay per click campaigns are concerned, however, putting the time and effort in, and monitoring your results, will be the difference between a mediocre and a great ad words campaign.
