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.