Blog

We’re not going to give Adwords tips on choosing keywords. Google has provide the wonderful Keyword Tool to deal with this issue. Now the task is what type of matching should we use. We have three types of keyword matching to choose from. Just to refresh, the first is broad match (e.g: electric guitar). If we use this matching, our ads is eligible to appear each time a user enter a search query that has the words “electric” and “guitar” in it (e.g: electric bass guitar, guitar effect electric, etc).

The second one is phrase match, this is done by putting the keyword inside quotation marks (e.g: “electric guitar”). This is a more targeted yet still flexible matching. Our ads will be eligible to show whenever a user’s query has the phrase “electric guitar” with the same sequence in it (e.g: cheap electric guitar, electric guitar case, etc). And the last one is exact match. This one is the most strictly targeted matching. Can be made by putting the keyword in square bracket (e.g: [electric guitar]). Our ads will only be shown if the user search our keyword exactly the same words, same sequence, with no other words in the query.

Broad match means more chance to get more impressions. Phrase match is all round. Exact match is good to have targeted user. For beginner, choosing match type could be tricky. But here’s a few tips.

First few weeks, use exact matching. Yes we wouldn’t get much traffic yet, but we could write the most targeted ad to enhance our quality score. More quality score means we’ll be more competitive among other advertisers in the same category. Do this for about 2-4 weeks. After that, we should be having higher quality score already. Change the matching type to phrase match and set the cpc bid higher. This will show them who’s the man.

Next step is to grab more and more traffic. This is the right time to use broad match. But be careful on keyword that is not really targeted or we will grab WRONG traffic. And the last one is try to use all matching type and set the bid separately.