The Get Paid Site

Previously, I had written an article to explain the different types of keyword matching options that you can use in your pay-per-click campaigns. I went into detail specifically about broad and negative match keywords, and now in this article I will go into detail about the remaining keyword matching options - phrase and exact.

Phrase and exact keywords will generally give your ad less impressions than a broad match. In Google Adwords, and MSN Adcenter, you specify a phrase match by surrounding your keywords in double quotes (” “), and specify exact match by surrounding your keywords with square brackets ([ ]).

In Yahoo Search Marketing it’s slightly different. You can specify all your adgroup keywords as either “Advanced” or “Standard” match. Generally speaking, advanced equals broad and standard equals exact match.

Phrase Match

In the previous article, I used the keyword phrase ‘download music players’ as an example. Now for the phrase match, you would surround the phrase in double quotes, and only when someone searched those words in that order would your ad show up.

So, if someone were to search for these keywords, your ad would show up:

• download music players
• sites to download music players
• download music players for free

As long as the root keywords “download music players” appears in the search term, it will show your ad. You can see that since those three words have to be included, you will generate less impressions than broad match.

Exact Match

Now to get the least amount of impressions, you can use the exact match. To use exact match, surround your keywords with square brackets. So, [download music players] would be an exact match keyword. Only when someone uses that exact phrase in the search query box, will your ad show up. No other words in front or behind will trigger your ad.

So why would you want less impressions? Well, you have a better idea of what the the person is searching for because you are matching their thoughts exactly. You know that they are looking to “download music players“, not an unrelated phrase such as “download the music from poker players“, which would show up if you made that a broad match. Having too many unrelated searches will show your ad and result in lower CTR and thus a lower quality score.

So which should you use? Well if your keywords have a large enough search volume, you could test all three: broad, phrase and exact. Once you start finding which types are giving you better sales, then you can bump the bid price up or down accordingly. If you find lots of broad matches are converting, then make sure you are tracking those exact keywords so you can create more keyword variations from them.

Filed under: Keywords, Search Marketing on December 1st, 2007