Keyword Match Types: When Is Narrow Too Narrow?

Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 17 of November , 2007 at 2:53 am

When should you narrow your keyword matches? That’s a good question and one that every pay per click advertiser should answer for themselves. There are times when going with the broad match type is best and times when you should narrow your match type for greater effectiveness. But which is which?

Google’s default match type is the broad match type. The narrow match type if the phrase match type. I would use this match type a specific key phrase is important for your landing page. In other words, if you are marketing an eBook that is all about green widgets then “green widgets” would be a phrase that is very important for your campaign. You’ll want to enclose this keyword phrase in quotation marks to ensure that your PPC ad is optimized for that specific phrase. It tells the search engine that the exact phrase is important rather than both words separately.

Keep in mind, however, that with the phrase match your keyword phrase could be matched with other keywords. For instance, if a searcher queries “wooden green widgets” then your ad would appear for that search phrase because “green widgets” appears in the query exactly as you have it in your phrase match type. The fact that “wooden” has been added will not affect your ad placement. If you sell both wooden and plastic green widgets then that is the way you should style your match type.

But what if you sell ONLY plastic green widgets and you are not interested in your ad appearing on a search results page for “wooden green widgets.” The exact match, placing your keyword phrase in brackets like this - [plastic green widgets] - tells the search engines that you want your ad to appear ONLY on pages where searchers query that exact phrase. Your ad will not appear for “green widgets,” “widgets,” or “wooden green widgets,” but only for the search phrase “plastic green widgets.”

When it comes to PPC optimization, the match types that you use could be vital to your campaign.

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.

Category: Keyword Match Types

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg