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.