If you are running several ad groups or pay per click campaigns simultaneously and using the same keyword in those ad groups, you should seriously reconsider. It could be hurting your ad groups.

Yahoo! Search Marketing’s blog tells you why:

For example, if you want to test Advanced and Standard match types by running both concurrently in identical ad groups, your keywords will compete against each other and drive up your cost-per-click. We’ve also seen advertisers duplicate keywords with multiple landing pages. The duplicated keywords can result in a lower quality index score and a higher cost-per-click.

I can’t think of any better reasons than these to stop duplicating your keywords. Higher CPCs, lower quality scores, and duplicate keywords that get deleted. Wouldn’t want any of that to happen to me.

And Yahoo! isn’t the only search engine with these policies. You could run into the same problems at other pay per click providers like Google and MSN adCenter. To be most effective, run tight ad groups with specific ad content and landing pages that don’t overlap. There is no sense in competing against yourself.

One of the most challenging aspects of running a pay per click campaign for new advertisers is optimizing keyword match types. The broad match, phrase match, and exact match can really bite you in the … you know what I mean. It can get complicated. But it doesn’t have to.

One way to think about match types is funneling. By using match types to narrow your focus to a specific target market, you can funnel the right prospects into your sales and conversion cycle more cost efficiently and more effectively. Broad match should be used for keywords that are so narrow in focus anyway that to get any narrower is to essentially close the door on your prospects. One exception might be where you can capture a broad swath of your target market and close the door on unqualified prospects with negative keywords.

Perhaps the most difficult match type is the phrase match. There is so much room for error. But if you have a clear idea what type of prospect each phrase will attract without any modifiers then you can optimize your PPC campaign to attract the market you are trying to reach. Exact match is easier, but if overdone you can leave a lot on the table. You would do yourself well to focus a lot of energy on learning how to play with match types.

Thanks to Goran Web for asking a great question on how to employ negative keywords in a PPC campaign. It can be confusing so I’ll try to answer the question as simply as I can.

The idea is to narrow your target audience by using negative keywords as a filter. If, for instance, you sell hats but you only stick to brimmed hats then any type of non-brim hat should be filtered out of your ad optimization efforts so that you reduce the number of non-targeted click-throughs. Therefore, you might use “toboggan” as a negative keyword. But before you establish what your negative keywords are, you first need to establish what your match type keywords are for the campaign you are running.

You may sell all types of brimmed hats, but you may want to run a fedora campaign. Perhaps your line of fedoras is the biggest on the planet, but the one fedora that you can’t seem to keep in stock is the purple velvet fedora. For some reason, the purple velvet fedora seems to sell out quite often and you have to replenish your stock. Yellow velvet, red velvet, white velvet, and black velvet fedoras don’t seem to sell out as often.

Starting out you wouldn’t use any negative keywords associated with fedoras. But let’s say that in the middle of your campaign you run out of purple fedoras. Now you don’t want disappointed shoppers showing up on your landing page costing you money and not being able to deliver on the customer’s expectations. So you need to use the “purple velvet” phrase as a negative keyword under the rubric of “fedora” as a broad match.” You could also use “velvet fedora” as a phrase or exact match type for your campaign and toss in “purple” as the negative keyword to filter out those people who are looking specifically for the purple velvet fedora.

That’s how negative keywords work. You want to leave yourself some room to grab your targeted customer while filtering out those people are looking for something so specific that you can’t meet their need.

New advertisers often get stuck and call for help because they don’t quite understand how to choose between broad, phrase, and exact match. I admit, it’s a challenge. Even the pros sometimes make a mistake. But the biggest mistake - or one of the biggest - for new advertisers is often choosing broad match for their strongest keywords when phrase or exact match would best target the market they are after.

Understand that broad match is the least targeted keyword matching method available to pay per click advertisers. This is where you use the broadest form of a keyword with no limiting factors. For instance, if you are an SEO company and you target the keyword “seo”. That’s broad match.

Phrase match would be where you target a phrase that searchers would search for but your targeting isn’t so narrow that it’s focused only on that phrase. For instance, “ethical seo” is the format for phrase match where you want to target the phrase ethical seo. When a searcher uses the phrase in their search query, even if other words appear before or after, then your targeted phrase will trigger your ad to be shown for that search query.

The most targeted keyword matching criteria is the exact match. By putting brackets around [ethical seo] you are telling the search engine to show your ad only for that phrase and nothing else. In other words, if a searcher queries affordable ethical seo then your ad will not show for exact match, but it would for phrase match.

New advertisers often think that if they target the broadest search term for their business then they’ll get more clicks. That is quite often the case, but those clicks are just as often untargeted clicks. If you want targeted clicks - that is, you want to reach the people who are looking for your product or service - then you need to narrow your keyword matches. And that takes skill.

Yesterday we discussed how you can use match types to group your ads. What we didn’t mention was that the inspiration for the post was this SE Roundtable blog post from last week.

We didn’t feel the need to address the post head on last week, but we’d like to respond to PPC Hero’s call for a discussion just this morning.

Our take is pretty much the same as the Hero’s. It is a little odd, first, that Google would make that recommendation, but secondly there is no real logical reason why you’d refrain from using all of your match types for your pay per click advertising campaigns. Yesterday, we recommended using the exact match type to target the most specific product name that you want to be found for in conjunction with the broad match phrase for the family of products those specific product types fall under. Keep in mind that this suggestion is made for groups of products that fall within the same family. But what if you have single products you want to target from a variety of product families. Can you group your keywords into one ad group using your match types?

Understand that match types are flexible. Use them to your advantage. One way to see them is by taking an analogy from battle planning. A general during war maneuvers might use obstacles to canalize the enemy into a kill position. A barrier might be used to block a pass so that the enemy is forced to find another way to its destination. Trying to maneuver around the pass, the enemy is then confronted with a natural barrier, a river, booby trapped with concertina wire. Now what?

In the same manner, match types can be used to send your customers where you want them. You can mix and match the various match types of achieve the desired ends in any creative manner possible. So let’s get back to our example, shall we?

We’ll say you have three products - A, B, and C - that you want to promote with a particular ad group. Each product comes from a different family of products within your inventory - say Families 1, 2, and 3. But all three of those families of product fall under the wider umbrella of Genus X, which doesn’t represent your entire inventory but perhaps a segment of your inventory. Confused?

Don’t be. You want to capture a targeted audience specific to these three products, but you don’t just want to use the narrowest match type possible because you might miss some opportunities. Here’s one way to mix your match types to achieve your goal:

[Product A]
[Product B]
[Product C]
“Family 1″
“Family 2″
“Family 3″
-Product D
-Product E
-Product F
Genus X
-Family 4
-Family 5

OK, so this is a raw example. Let’s insert real names for these variables:

Genus X = Gadget
Family 1 = Capsized Gadget
Family 2 = Crooked Gadget
Family 3 = Contorted Gadget
Family 4 = Buoyant Gadget
Family 5 = Dry Gadget
Product A = Locking Capsized Gadget
Product B = Locking Crooked Gadget
Product C = Locking Contorted Gadget
Product D = Unlocking Capsized Gadget
Product E = Unlocking Crooked Gadget
Product F = Unlocking Contorted Gadget

Again, this is just one example. There are various ways you could achieve the same results. The principle to understand here is that match types are available to help you reach the right market for your products. If you are advertising your locking gadgets through one ad group and your unlocking gadgets through another then you can reach that target market by grouping your match types with mixed and matched levels of targeting. That’s what match types are for.

Match types are a very powerful tool if you know how to use them. Here’s a recap as to what they mean:

• Broad - The broadest term for your niche (example: motorcycle); does not filter.
• Phrase - Shows terms that use your phrase but filters out related phrases that don’t include the phrase. Shows up in parentheses. (example: “yellow motorcyle” will show yellow motorcycle and big yellow motorcycle but not motorcycle of yellow.)
• Exact - Delinated by brackets [ ]; filters out anything that doesn’t match your phrase exactly. (example: [yellow motorcycle] will show for the search term “yellow motorcycle” but not for “big yellow motorcycle” or “little yellow motorcycle”.)

Let’s say you run a local motorcycle shop and you sell motorcycles of various brands. You can start an ad group titled “HD Electra Glide” where your ads are grouped along that brand’s specificity. The keywords you target in that group might look like this:

[FLHTC Electra Glide Class]
[FLHTCU Ultra Classic Electra Glide]
[FLHT Electra Glide Standard]
“Electra Glide”
- parts

This ad grouping shows that you are targeting specific brands within the Electra Glide family, but you are also interested in showing up for phrase match searches related to the Electra Glide brand. So any search for Electra Glide will bring up your pay per click ad. You want to target the exact phrase for each brand you target as well because you want to make sure they aren’t left out. But you don’t sell parts so you add the negative keyword parts so that any time a search for Electra Glide parts is made your ad is not shown. You can do the same thing with other brands. Try the Softail model for instance:

[FLSTN Softail Deluxe]
[FXCWC Softail Rocker C]
[FXSTC Softail Custom Anniversary Model]
[FXSTC Softail Custom]
[FXSTB Softail Night Train]
[FXCW Softail Rocker]
[FLSTC Softail Heritage Classic]
“Harley Davidson Softail”
- parts

No need to target the broad match for Harley Davidson because any search for Harley Davidson will bring up your ad. You want a more targeted effort. Also, if you broad phrase match “softail” then you’re ad will show up for all sorts of other searches that people may make not related to motorcycles. That’s when you’ll want to include the Harley Davidson brand because if someone is searching for the Softail then they will more than likely use HD in the search. Again, you don’t sell parts so add the negative keyword phrase in there as well.

These are just two examples of how match types can be used to engage in targeted pay per click advertising. There are plenty more.

Did you know you can use match type options with your negative keywords? In fact, to be most effective in the management of your pay per click campaign you should make some of your negative keywords either phrase or exact match.

Let’s define the different match type options:

• Broad Match - Applies across the board to your keywords. If you specify a broad match then you are saying anything with those specific keywords apply to your filter. For example, for the broad match phrase yellow widget, any use of the words yellow or widget would apply to your filter.
• Phrase Match - Phrase match is a little narrower. Let’s say you put your broad match phrase in quotation marks - “yellow widget”. In that case, any instance of yellow widget in addition to other words would trigger your filter. So a search for “huge yellow widget” would return results for that phrase match if you didn’t include any negative phrases in your filters. On the other hand, a search for “yellow widget huge” would not return results”
• Exact Match - Exact match is delineated by brackets [ ]. An exact match phrase returns results for that specific phrase and nothing else. So if we put “yellow widgets in brackets like this - [yellow widget] - then a user searching for yellow widget would see your ad, but a user search for yellow widgets, huge yellow widgets, or yellow widgets with wheels would not.

Now, how can you use these match types to filter out words and phrases you don’t want users to search for and find your ad?

If your key phrase is yellow widget and you use a negative broad match key phrase long wide then any instance of long or wide appearing with your keyword phrase yellow widget would be filtered out. So if a user searches for long wide yellow widget, she will not see your ad, but if she searched for huge yellow widget then she would.

Now let’s take the negative phrase filter and put quotation marks on it. It now becomes a phrase match negative keyword phrase. How will that affect a user’s search query? In that case, if a user searches for “long wide yellow widget” then your ad would not show, but if the user searched for “wide long yellow widget” then she would see your ad because it doesn’t fit the parameters of the phrase you placed in quotes.

Now let’s take the quotation marks off the negative phrase and add brackets to it to make it an exact match negative keyword phrase, like this - [long wide yellow widget]. In that case, any combination of these four words together would show your ad for a search query with the exception of the exact phrase “long wide yellow widget”. Users searching for that specific phrase would not see your ad.

As you can see, with negative keywords, the more specific you are with your filters then the fewer search queries that will be affected by them. And that’s how you can use match types to filter out negative keywords in your pay per click advertising campaigns.

Match types are an important part of a pay per click campaign. They can narrow your target audience in just a few key strokes and most pay per click campaigns can be further defined by the use of them.

There are three match types that you need to know and all of them are useful in defining your pay per click campaign’s terms and reaching the right audience:

• Exact Match - An exact match is when you include a keyword that will match a search query exactly. There will be no spelling variations. “Yellow widget” is yellow widget. Your ad will be seen only when a searcher uses the exact phrase “yellow widget” in their search. Not even the plural of this keyword will turn up your PPC ad.
• Phrase Match - A phrase match returns your ad for any keyword search that uses your exact keyword match along with other words. For instance, “yellow widget” would return searches for “small yellow widget”, “yellow widget with three legs”, or “yellow widgets”. It is somewhat broader than exact match, but it is not as broad as the broad match category of match types.
• Broad Match - Where the phrase match limits a search to a phrase exactly as it written or spelled out, broad match does not. “Yellow widget” used as a keyword would still turn up your ad for searches including “yellow copper widget” and would also turn your ad up for each specific word within the phrase, that is, “yellow” and “widget”.

Using match types to narrow the limitations on your pay per click campaigns is smart. Using a broad match when a phrase match or exact match is more appropriate could cost you in terms of clicks and run up your budget on less valuable clicks. That would decrease your ROI and cause you to lose money on your advertising. Using match types if a wise idea.

It may seem intuitive to seasoned pros, but I’ve seen newbies make this mistake. With your negative keywords you don’t want to include an exact match keyword in your keywords list then cancel it out with the same exact match as a negative keyword. For example, if your exact match keyword is “yellow rotating widget” then using that same keyword match as a negative keyword will effectively tell the search engine not to use that keyword. Why would you do that?

The negative keyword feature is to tell the search engine that a particular keyword match is not right for your campaign. It’s best used when you have a broad match or a phrase match, but there are exact matches when the broader category that you don’t want included. For instance, if you sell rotating widgets in ever color except yellow then you might do this:

“rotating widget” = phrase match
yellow rotating widget = negative keyword match

You can do the same thing with “rotating widget” as a broad match. But I would use “yellow rotating widget” as a broad or phrase match then include it as a negative keyword. Use the negative keyword list to narrow your keyword matches within a broader array.

There is a time when you probably want to ditch the exact and phrase match of your keyword list and focus instead on the broad match. And that time is when you see the low-volume keyword notice from Google AdWords. This is a message you get when Google decides not to show your ads because they don’t get enough queries in a single month to make running those ads profitable for themselves. Evidently, they’re paying people too much to make some long-tail keyword phrases pay enough to put the time into it. That’s what Amber at PPC Hero recently learned.

You’ve been told over and over again how the long tail keyword phrases were the ones to go for. But that’s not necessarily true. If you are in an already narrow niche then long tail keywords will make your niche audience even narrower. You may not need the exact and phrase match types. A broad match might actually be better for you.

Unlike Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing only has two match types available for advertisers to choose from. You have an advanced match type option and a standard match type option. That’s it.

The advanced match type is a bit of a misnomer. It’s the default, which means it isn’t all that advanced. And it is the equal to Google AdWords’ broad match. That is, it matches search queries for broad search terms, which might capture more traffic, but some of that traffic might be irrelevant. For example,

“felt hat” might match results for “felt cowboy hat”, “felt fedora hat”, or “felt pillbox hat.” None of that will target your specific target market if you are trying to reach people interested in felt bowler hats.

When you use the advanced match type on Yahoo! you have to give it some excluded keywords to narrow your matches a little more. So you might exclude the keywords “cowboy”, “fedora”, and “pillbox” so that people interested in those hats don’t see your ad advertising bowlers.

The standard match type narrows your match types to the exact phrase that someone is searching for. So you would include “felt bowler hat” and people who use that exact phrase will see your ad. People who don’t use that phrase won’t see your ad. Note that this match includes both plural and singular so if you do use “felt bowler hat” then it will match the singular “hat” and the plural “hats.”

Let’s face it, some keywords just aren’t popular enough to have a year-round PPC campaign behind them. You know you’ve seen them. They’re popular at Christmastime, but you get no use from them for the rest of the year. Or maybe you see surges in popularity in the summer, but drops in other times of year. Maybe the keyword popularity goes up or down throughout the year based on holiday schedules or other influences within your industry. How do you capitalize on that?

Good question. The first step, of course, is to know and understand what causes those spikes, dips, and surges. You should also be tuned in to when they occur. It isn’t enough to know that baseball gloves are more popular just before little league season begins. You need to know when (generally) the interest in them starts. By knowing this information, you can time your ads to hit when people will start looking for what you have to offer.

Don’t start your advertising campaign when interest spikes. That’s too late. Kick it off a couple of weeks before that. You want to be the first to have your advertising in place so that you can capitalize early on when shoppers first begin to go looking for a product. Then, when the competition enters the field, you’ll already have a leg up. That will count for more than just sales. It will also make a difference with optimization and quality score.

You also don’t want to leave out keyword research. Don’t shortcut it just because it is a short-term campaign. Run it just as you would any other campaign. Start at the beginning, do your keyword research, and bid according to the value of the keywords. You can also use match types for your short-term campaigns. Run it like you would any other advertising campaign.

But you don’t have to use the spikes and surges for short term advertising campaigns. They are also useful in your long-term campaigns. The ones you run year-round. Those keywords that are a part of your campaign can have bid adjustments based on the season. You might even run a long-term and a short-term campaign simultaneously based on the seasons and times of year.

One more way to use this information is in your choice of negative keywords. Use those spikes to determine when to make a keyword a negative keyword and when to focus in on it through your bidding strategy or match type focus. The bottom line is to increase your revenues. You can do that by increasing your sales or by lowering your bids on keywords that don’t quite make the cut - even if it’s on a seasonal basis.

(Source) If you haven’t tested using negative keywords for your campaigns, I highly recommend doing so in the near future. It is an excellent strategy for improving the performance of your campaigns and minimizing unqualified click-throughs to your landing pages.

Google slipped one through on me. They changed the way you perform negative keyword selections in Google AdWords. It happens. But I’d like to say that this author is absolutely correct. Negative keywords can improve your click through percentage and your profits and it’s relatively easy to implement.

The main reason you want to use negative keywords in your pay per click campaigns is to prevent your ads from showing for searches that are unrelated to your product or service. For instance, let’s say that you sell dancing shoes. If you use the broad search terms “dancing shoes” without bracket or quotations (and I wouldn’t recommend doing that for that search term) then your ads will show up for any search related to dancing or shoes. So if someone types “brake shoes” into the Google search box because they are looking for prices on auto parts then your ad could draw clicks from unqualified customers and you’ll money. Unwanted clicks can really eat into your budget.

Similarly, if someone is looking for dancing schools then you’ll have your ads appear on the wrong pages for totally unrelated terms. So negative keywords can save you a bundle.

You enter your negative keywords the same way you do your positive keywords - one line at a time. But you select them based on your product or service and your target customer. Any potential keyword search that can be performed that is similar to the keywords used in your ads but that won’t deliver you targeted, qualified clicks should be a negative keyword. If you employ the negative keyword strategy you can bet that you will see an increase your ROI almost instantly.

Some pay per click advertisers go crazy on keywords. By that I mean they select a list of keywords loosely related to their ad and make sure all of those keywords are used in their optimization efforts. It’s like a “wish list” of words you hope searchers will find your ad by. But that isn’t the best approach.

You’ll do better, especially if you are new to pay per click, to pick just a handful of keywords that are directly related to the content in your ads and use only those keywords. Make all other keywords inactive. For instance, if you are selling blue widgets and your pay per click ad states that you have blue widgets made in China then you likely want to keep your keyword list small and related only to blue widgets. Useful keywords might include:

• widgets
• blue widgets
• widgets made China
• widgets in China

That’s your starting list. Next, take your list and make the keywords more specific by narrowing the match types, like this:

• [blue widgets]
• [widgets made China]
• [widgets in China]

You might also throw in a few, only a few, variations, such as:

• Chinese widgets
• Chinese blue widgets
• [Chinese widgets]
• [Chinese blue widgets]

Don’t get carried away with this. The idea is to keep your keyword list small and to use only keywords that are related directly to the words in your pay per click ad. You can expand on this list later.

Yesterday we talked about narrowing your match types for the best targeted message. There’s one other way to narrow your match types that I didn’t. You can use negative keywords and tell the search engines not to display your ads for certain keywords.

For instance, using the green widgets example again, if you make plastic widgets but not wooden widgets then you can use “wooden” as a negative keyword. Just add a minus sign (-) in front of the keyword and that tells the search engine not to use that keyword for your ad placement. The negative keyword “wooden” will not return your ad and for every search made for “wooden green widgets” your ad will be passed over. But if a searcher searches for “plastic green widgets” or a similar variation then your ad will display. Negative match types are one more option for you to use to optimize your ad displays.

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